Idiom Quotes

• Unfortunately or fortunately, in order to become acquainted with the idiom of country or rock music, it is necessary to occasionally play in a bar. Bars are a rehearsal place.

  Garth Hudson

  Country, Order, Play

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• Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Style, Spirit, Language

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans”, p.159

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• A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

  George Orwell

  Writing, Political Language, Trying

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Growing Up, Creative, Progress

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• As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.

  George Will

  Communication, Noise, Normal

  George F. Will (1978). “The pursuit of happiness, and other sobering thoughts”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Idiom is larger than geography it is the hot breath of a people singing, slashing, explorative. Imagery becomes the magic denominator, the language of a passage, saying the ancient unchanging particulars.

  Mari Evans

  People, Magic, Singing

  Mari Evans (2006). “Clarity as Concept: A Poet's Perspective : a Collection of Essays”

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• The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Real, Political Language

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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• Do not put all your eggs in one basket.

  Warren Buffett

  Easter, Eggs, Investment Success

  Lawrence A. Cunningham, Warren E. Buffett (2013). “The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America (Third Edition)”, p.13, Carolina Academic Press

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• I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.

  Jacques Derrida

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.200, Stanford University Press

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• Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.

  Gordon Allport

  Science, Syntax, Violation

  Gordon Willard Allport (1955). “Becoming; Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality”, p.19, Yale University Press

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• The American idiom has much to offer us that the English language has never heard of

  William Carlos Williams

  Language, Heard, Offers

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• By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Effort, Leaving

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Many hands make light work.

  John Heywood

  Change, Teamwork, Hands

  John Heywood (1562). “The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood ...”, p.221

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• You cannot judge a book by its contents.

  Jon Stewart

  Book, Judging, Judging A Book By Its Cover

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• Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

  John Heywood

  Birthday, Gratitude, Horse

  John Heywood (1562). “The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood ...”, p.391

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• Don't count your chickens before they egg.

  Ross O'Donovan

  Eggs, Fables, Chickens

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• Now it seems to me that we are in a universalising period... If we are to have world peace, we should have an understanding of all the idioms of beauty because the members of humanity who have created these idioms of beauty are going to be a part of us. And I would say that we are in a period when we are discovering and becoming acquainted with these idioms for the first time.

  Mark Tobey

  Should Have, Understanding, Humanity

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• Style, in the broadest sense of all, is consciousness. More specifically it is a consistent idiom arising spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained.

  Quentin Crisp

  Personality, Style, Consciousness

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• I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)

  Jodi Picoult

  Country, Mean, People

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.941, Simon and Schuster

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• Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Easter, Investment Success, Chocolate Eggs

  "Moral essays on proverbs". Book by Samuel Palmer, 1710.

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• A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Science, Fairy Stories, Facts

  Concept of Mind (1949) introduction

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• The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

  George Crumb

  Development, Instrumental Music, Remarkable

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• On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.

  Albert Einstein

  Grease, Brain, Use

  Quoted by Otto Stern in an interview with Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962.

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• God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. Its the same in religion.

  Huston Smith

  People, Chinese, Different

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• To make the bloody thing talk the way I do when I'm on a verbal roll, in my idioms and rhythms.

  Gary Lucas

  Way, Rhythm, Bloody

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