Vocabulary Quotes - Page 20

• Retirement is not in my vocabulary.

  Betty White

  Retirement

  "Q&A with Betty White: At 88, this dame's still game". Interview with Susan Wloszcznya, usatoday30.usatoday.com. January 21, 2010.

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• The developers and entrepreneurs must somehow be taught a new vocabulary of values.

  Edward Abbey

  Entrepreneur, Taught, Developers

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.46, RosettaBooks

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• Most of us have developed a fairly extensive vocabulary for describing pain, as though the journal were a doctor requiring much detail to make the correct diagnosis. The roundness of the spiritual journey cannot be expressed without developing an equally extensive vocabulary for talking to ourselves and others about the nature of wonder, joy, ecstasy, love, transfiguration.

  Christina Baldwin

  Spiritual, Pain, Journey

  Christina Baldwin (1991). “Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest”, Bantam

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• A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
  An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle.

  Mo Willems

  Sexy, Fun, Book

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• One of your first jobs, as you write for money, will be to get rid of your vocabulary.

  Jack Woodford

  Jobs, Writing, Firsts

  Jack Woodford (2012). “Trial and Error”, p.126, askmar publishing

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• I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.

  J. G. Ballard

  Believe, Ideas, Literature

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• We have demythologized prematurely, that we've actually lost the vocabulary for discussing reality at its largest scales. The idea that myth is the opposite of knowledge, or the opposite of truth, is simply to disallow it. It is like saying poetry is the opposite of truth.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reality, Opposites, Ideas

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy. [...] Sentiment is not mushy.

  David Brooks

  Frustration, Sound, World

  "Ask the Author Live: David Brooks on the Composure Class". Live chat with readers, www.newyorker.com. January 7, 2011.

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• I'm not a pop artist. For me pop never was.... Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don't think pop artists feel that way.

  Jim Dine

  Artist, Thinking, Feelings

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• One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.

  Tom Lehrer

  Sex, Comedian, Say Anything

  Sydney Morning Herald interview, www.smh.com.au. March 1, 2003.

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• Certainly we must be strong, but strength is, to me, not just a force, but rather a vocabulary of many means

  Doris Humphrey

  Strong, Mean, Force

  Doris Humphrey (1959). “The art of making dances”

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• The language of the culture also reflects the stories of the culture. One word or simple phrasal labels often describe the story adequately enough in what we have termed culturally common stories. To some extent, the stories of a culture are observable by inspecting the vocabulary of that culture. Often entire stories are embodied in one very culture-specific word. The story words unique to a culture reveal cultural differences.

  Roger Schank

  Unique, Simple, Differences

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• I need to get a greater vocabulary than what I have and when I get mad and my brain searches for a word. I have to find different words and to do that you need to have more of an education.

  Duane Chapman

  Mad, Brain, Different

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• My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

  Grace Paley

  Writing, Useless, Adequate

  Grace Paley (2014). “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories”, p.85, Macmillan

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• To anyone who has followed the practice of using profanity or vulgarity and would like to correct the habit, could I offer this suggestion? First, make the commitment to erase such words from your vocabulary. Next, if you slip and say a swear word or a substitute word, mentally reconstruct the sentence without the vulgarity or substitute word and repeat the new sentence aloud. Eventually you will develop a non-vulgar speech habit.

  L. Tom Perry

  Commitment, Practice, Suggestions

  "Thy Speech Reveals Thee". L. Tom Perry's speech at the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, www.lds.org. August 1986.

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• Compassion is a piece of vocabulary that could change us if we truly let it sink into the standards to which we hold ourselves and others.

  Krista Tippett

  Work, Compassion, Pieces

  "Reconnecting with compassion". TED Talks, www.ted.com. November 2010.

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• There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Writing, Use, Literature

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• The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.

  Derek Walcott

  Moving, Islands, Luck

  Derek Walcott (2014). “What the Twilight Says: Essays”, p.79, Macmillan

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• I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Work Out, Silence, Chaos

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

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• I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Thinking, Musical, Trying

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• All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

  Aldous Huxley

  War, Lasts, Murder

  "Pacifism and Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley, 1936.

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• There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular - a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.

  Shane Claiborne

  Christian, Jesus, Thinking

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