Vocabulary Quotes

• One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Names, Needs, Literature

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• Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study.

  Aldous Huxley

  Play, Study, Enormous

  Aldous Huxley (1940). “Words and their meanings”

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• You can't build a vocabulary without reading. You can't meet friends if you ... stay at home by yourself all the time. In the same way, you can't build up a vocabulary if you never meet any new words. And to meet them you must read. The more you read the better.

  Rudolf Flesch

  Reading, Home, Way

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• Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation

  Robert Frost

  Art, Discipline, Firsts

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• Simply by changing your habitual vocabulary, you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live.

  Tony Robbins

  Thinking, How You Feel, Feels

  Tony Robbins (2012). “Awaken The Giant Within”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

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• All I know is what I have words for.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Vocabulary Words, Knows

  "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Book by Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922.

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• As vocabulary is reduced , so are the number of feelings you can express, the number of events you can describe, the number of the things you can identify! Not only understanding is limited, but also experience. Man grows by language. Whenever he limits language he retrogresses!

  Sheri S. Tepper

  Men, Numbers, Feelings

  Sheri S. Tepper (2011). “Plague of Angels”, p.189, Spectra

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• A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.

  Sara Sheridan

  Character, Interesting, Choices

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• People with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life; people with rich vocabularies have a multihued palette of colors with which to paint their experience, not only for others, but for themselves as well.

  Tony Robbins

  Motivational, Emotional, Color

  Tony Robbins (2007). “Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial”, p.201, Simon and Schuster

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• The last motive in the world for acquiring vocabulary should be to impress. Words should be acquired because we urgently need them - to convey, to reach, to express something within us, and to understand others.

  Vanna Bonta

  Needs, World, Lasts

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• Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.

  David Crystal

  Matter, Building, Wells

  "The History Of 7 Bizarre English Words" by David Crystal, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 27, 2012.

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• It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.

  Fred Frith

  Doe, Body, Language

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• A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.

  Winston Churchill

  Simplicity, Simple Life, Simple Living

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• Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Bread, English Language

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• We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.

  Christopher Reeve

  Time, Moving, Health

  Christopher Reeve Testimony, www.chrisreevehomepage.com. April 14, 1999.

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• The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Important, Transition, Syntax

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• Tired is not a word in my vocabulary.

  Brittany Murphy

  Tired, Getting Tired

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It's interesting to help someone find their vocabulary. There would not have been a De Niro without a Scorsese.

  Jason Patric

  Interesting, Helping, De Niro

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• I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism.

  Annie Leibovitz

  Artist, Style, Different

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• As you can appreciate over my lifetime I've developed a large vocabulary of sounds each requiring certain physical techniques often combined with a specific effect box.

  Adrian Belew

  Appreciate, Technique, Sound

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• So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language.

  Michael Polanyi

  Long, Use, Language

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• Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate.

  Mos Def

  Art, People, Consciousness

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• "Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Friendship, Teacher, Cute Best Friend

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• Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Mind, Mastery, Syntax

  Spectator 19 Nov. 1937 "The Psychology of Advertising"

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• Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.

  Margaret Mahy

  Character, Differences, Use

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