Vocabulary Quotes - Page 5

• The danger is that people may mistake what is basically a change in vocabulary for a change in behavior, practices, and attitudes. While practically all Americans have learned to talk inoffensively, not enough have learned to think differently, nor act positively.

  Whitney M. Young

  Attitude, Mistake, Thinking

  Whitney M. Young (1964). “To be equal”

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• I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are the words of fools.

  Og Mandino

  Greatness, Phrases, Fool

  Og Mandino (2009). “The Greatest Secret in the World”, p.38, Bantam

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• We receive experience from nature in a series of messages. From these messages we extract a content of information: that is, we decode the messages in some way. And from this code of information we then make a basic vocabulary of concepts and a basic grammar of laws, which jointly describe the inner organization that nature translates into the happenings and the appearances we meet.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Nature, Science, Law

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• Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job.

  Alex Garland

  Dream, Jobs, Memories

  Alex Garland (2005). “The Coma”, p.135, Penguin

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• Tomorrow-drop that word from your vocabulary! Tomorrow does not exist, it cannot exist: it is not in the nature of things. Only this day exists.

  Rajneesh

  Doe, Tomorrow, Miscellaneous

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• Losing is not in my vocabulary.

  Ruud van Nistelrooy

  Inspirational, Motivational, Football

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• At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Real, Writing, Maturity

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• What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies....Fiction is democratic, it reasserts the authority of the single mind to make and remake the world.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Knowing, Mind

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• In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Attitude, Writing, Race

  Donald E. Westlake (2014). “The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany”, p.28, University of Chicago Press

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• Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Philosophical, People, Purpose

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• A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.

  Paul Valery

  Writing, Mind, Action

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• Style is a continuum. Style never changes. It's a straight line. It's a refinement of the same vocabulary. Style takes you from day to evening, season to season.

  Ralph Rucci

  Style, Lines, Evening

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• Words have power. Use the language of leadership versus the vocabulary of a victim.

  Robin Sharma

  Use, Language, Victim

  FaceBook post by Robin Sharma from Apr 30, 2014

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• Human language has a vocabulary suited to our daily needs and functions: the shape of any human language maps approximately to the needs and activities of our mundane lives. But few would deny that there is another dimension of human existence which transcends the mundane: call it the soul, the spirit: it is that part of the human frame which sees the shimmer of the numinous.

  Julian Burnside

  Communication, Media, Soul

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• You must take responsibility for removing I can't from your vocabulary.

  Jack Canfield

  Responsibility, Taking Responsibility, I Can

  Jack Canfield, Janet Switzer (2009). “The Success Principles(TM)”, p.42, Harper Collins

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• The words: never, can't, quit, and fail, are not in my vocabulary.

  Robert Cheeke

  Motivational, Bodybuilding, Quitting

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• Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.

  Joseph Campbell

  Coercion, Reason, Symbols

  Joseph Campbell (1968). “The Masks of God: Creative Mythology”

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• WHY is the most important word in an actor's vocabulary.

  Sanford Meisner

  Important, Important Words, Actors

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• The term 'laity' is one of the worst in the vocabulary of religion and ought to be banished from the Christian conversation.

  Karl Barth

  Christian, Conversation, Worst

  Karl Barth (1986). “A Karl Barth Reader”, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

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• After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.

  John Ralston Saul

  Stars, Personality, Political

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.532, Simon and Schuster

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• This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reflection, Doe, Culture

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.106, Routledge

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• Banish the words 'I can't' from your vocabulary. Remember: If 'can't' equals 'won't', 'can' equals 'will'.

  Phyllis George

  Remember, Ifs, I Can

  "Never Say Never". Book by Phyllis George, abcnews.go.com. 2002.

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• One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

  Seth Godin

  Voice, People, Reason

  "Inside Seth Godin's Blogging Philosophy". Interview with Josh Bernoff, adage.com. July 13, 2009.

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• The word 'suffering' is not in my vocabulary.

  Judith Jamison

  Suffering

  "Portrait of the artist". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. August 28, 2007.

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• True expression is hard when performing opera. The problem is that opera relies on the dramatic context of the piece. It can be interpreted and represented, but there are guidelines; there is a vocabulary within the pieces that you must know objectively and reflect.

  Zola Jesus

  Expression, Pieces, Opera

  Interview with Elliott Sharp, www.avclub.com. April 25, 2011.

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