Verbs Quotes - Page 6

• Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.

  Mary Oliver

  Poetry, Adjectives, Looks

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• A person who uses party as a verb is a person who will walk into a shop and walk out wearing a rubber jumpsuit.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Party, Use, Rubber

  Cynthia Heimel (1988). “But Enough about You”, Fireside

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• Feminism is something you do. It's a verb. It's what you are. It's an activity; it's something you're actively engaged in.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Feminism, Activity, Engaged

  "Kathleen Hanna on Bikini Kill, growing up, and being a feminist icon". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. November 20, 2012.

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• [On her recently widowed father's much younger wife:] My father has been very busy in conjugating the verb to love, and I assure you he declines its moods and tenses inimitably.

  Abby May Alcott

  Father, Wife, Busy

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• We have three things in common: Irish wives, the ability to speak for 17 minutes without a verb, and the fact that we both speak with an accent.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Wife, Three, Facts

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• In the history of the concept of number has been adjective (three cows, three monads) and noun (three, pure and simple), and now ... number seems to be more like a verb (to triple).

  Barry Mazur

  Simple, Numbers, Three

  Barry Mazur (2004). “Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)”, p.138, Macmillan

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• Being accused of making money by selling sex in Hollywood, home of the casting couch and the gratuitous nude scene, is so rich with irony that it's a better subject for a comic novel than a column.... On one coast the cops are busting sex workers on Eighth Avenue, dragging them downtown to night court where they pay the fine and go right back to their corner; on another they're charging Heidi Fleiss with pandering in a town in which the verb is an art form.

  Anna Quindlen

  Art, Sex, Home

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• I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
  The code of night tapped on my tongue;
  What had been one was many sounding minded.

  Dylan Thomas

  Learning, Knowledge, Night

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

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• The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Passive Voice, Nouns, Adjectives

  Benjamin Lee Whorf, John B. Carroll, Stephen C. Levinson, Penny Lee (2012). “Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf”, p.113, MIT Press

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• For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It's not "integrity," it's "always do the right thing." It's not "innovation," it's "look at the problem from a different angle." Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.

  Simon Sinek

  Leadership, Integrity, Guiding Principles

  Simon Sinek (2009). “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”, p.53, Penguin

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• Many dog owners believe that as much as 60 percent of their pet's brain is set aside solely to demonstrate applications of the verb "to eat"-in both the active and passive forms.

  Stanley Coren

  Dog, Believe, Pet

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• J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, "jacere", "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Dog, Latin, Tails

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.115, 谷月社

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• I manage a toast to the Christmas tree and one to the sweet absurdity in the miracle of the verb to be. Lucky you, lucky me.

  Miller Williams

  Christmas, Sweet, Tree

  Miller Williams (1997). “The Ways We Touch: Poems”, p.29, University of Illinois Press

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• Love as a verb. Love as a commitment.

  Emily Giffin

  Commitment

  Emily Giffin (2008). “Love the One You're With”, p.194, Macmillan

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• The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.

  Sherman Alexie

  Beautiful, Shine On, Circles

  Sherman Alexie (1993). “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, Harper Perennial

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• The French verb aimer has two meanings. And that’s why he liked her, and loved her. She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.

  John Green

  Two, Matter, Language

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.134, Penguin

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• Love is a verb. We have to let our love call us to action.

  Lierre Keith

  Love Is, Our Love, Action

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• I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.

  Charles Darwin

  Real, Reading, Expression

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.10473, Delphi Classics

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• There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort - things which are always inside of us and in fact are us and which consequently will not be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them - are no longer things; they, and the us which they are, equals A Verb; an IS.

  e. e. cummings

  Life, Believe, Simple

  E.E. Cummings (2015). “The Enormous Room”, p.162, Xist Publishing

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• There is a word, in a verb, something sacred which forbids us from using it recklessly.  To handle a language cunningly is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Practice, Sorcery, Sacred

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

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• We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.

  Martin Luther

  Dream, Kings, Real

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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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• ...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.

  Pat Metheny

  Musical, Jazz And Life, Process

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• Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Seasons

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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• Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Thinking, Identity

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