Diction Quotes - Page 2

• I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen - I'm grateful for it. I studied diction, breathing control, phrasing, why the song means something. You want to bring that across to your listeners.

  Ledisi

  Song, Grateful, Mean

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• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

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• Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

  Harper Lee

  Father, Understanding, Lasts

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• Art-making is learned by immersion. You take in vocabularies of thought and feeling, grammar, diction, gesture, from the poems of others, and emerge with the power to turn language into a lathe for re-shaping, re-knowing your own tongue, heart, and life.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Art, Vocabulary, Knowing

  "Of Amplitude There Is No Scraping Bottom: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield". Interview with Rebecca Olson, tinhouse.com. March 16, 2015.

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• Despite my lovely diction I am going to die.

  Lynn Emanuel

  Lovely, Despite, Dies

  Lynn Emanuel (2015). “The Nerve Of It: Poems New and Selected”, p.50, University of Pittsburgh Press

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• How can one talk in a classical language about a child who's torn apart in an explosion in the market near his school? People in Iraq don't talk about their joys, their problems, and the destruction of the country in literary diction.

  Hassan Blasim

  Country, Children, School

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Book, Mean, Simple

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• When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Writing, Light, Hair

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• No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Flower, Acceptance

  Edward McKendree Bounds (1976). “The necessity of prayer”, Baker Pub Group

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• There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation.

  John Dryden

  Giving, Grace, Lame

  John Dryden (1866). “Poetical Works: With a Memoir”, p.129

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• When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

  John Arbuthnot

  Simplicity, Greek, Honor

  George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

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• This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.

  Stephen Graham Jones

  Imagination, Tone, Classroom

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• However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.

  J. L. Austin

  May, Facts, Language

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 195, 1979.

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• Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism... It is the Fashion to be a wit... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing.

  James Branch Cabell

  Fashion, Men, Criticism

  "The Comedies of William Congreve". William and Mary College Monthly, Volume V (p. 41), September 1897; later quoted in "James Branch Cabell at William and Mary: the Education of a Novelist" by William L. Godshalk in "The William and Mary Review", No. 5, 1967, and in "Kalki", Volume II, No. 4, whole No. 8, 1968.

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• Apostolic preaching is not marked by its beautiful diction, or literary polish, or Cleverness of expression, but Operates “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

  Arthur Wallis

  Beautiful, Expression, Spirit

  Arthur Wallis (2010). “In the Day of Thy Power: The Spiritual Principles of Revival”, p.96, CLC Publications

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• If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

  Aristotle

  Character, Play, Together

  Aristotle (2016). “Poetics”, p.22, Aristotle

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• The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.

  Marie Corelli

  Mean, Style, Classic

  Marie Corelli (1972). “Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct”, p.304, Health Research Books

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• [On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] ... for finish, and melody of versification, there is nothing approaching to Miss Barrett in this day, or in any other - also for diction. Her words paint.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Missing, Poet, Paint

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• With impeccable timing and a fine instinct for the telling detail, Francesca Abbate evokes the plenitudes and the deprivations of human habitation, the nurturing richness of landscape, and the soul-wound wrought by casual defacement. Abbate has a superb capacity for distillation and a mastery of poetic line, and her diction is remarkably flexible, accommodating both the demotic and the lyrical. Her poems are as consistent in quality as they are varied in pacing, surface, and tone. A fine first book.

  Linda Gregerson

  Book, Soul, Quality

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• For whatever reason, thus far it's been important to me not to write that kind of collection. Which means that I've spent months playing tic-tac-notecard, trying to get the stories in an order whereby stories that are similar in any given way (diction, narrative stance, setting, plot) are separated by others that aren't.

  Roy Kesey

  Writing, Mean, Order

  Source: therumpus.net

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