Epithet Quotes

• I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them.

  Gloria Steinem

  Thinking, Names, People

  "The Humanist Interview with Gloria Steinem" by Jennifer Bardi, thehumanist.com. August 14, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

  Paul Gauguin

  Art, Done, Revolutionary

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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Children, Women, Weakness

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.17, Lulu.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Logic, Argument, Insolence

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1647, Library of Alexandria

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.

  Howard Thurman

  Men, Order, Equilibrium

  Howard Thurman (2014). “A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life”, p.143, Beacon Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Lying, Way, Facts

  "Of Books". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Calling, Hell

  'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy' (1865) ch. 7

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Common Sense, Superstitions, Blasphemy

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1217, Library of Alexandria

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.

  Charles Lamb

  Dog, Gentleman, Sake

  Letter to Coleridge, August 6, 1800.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a result of the feminist revolution, feminine becomes an abusive epithet.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Feminist, Feminism, Revolution

  Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Feelings, Degrees

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: First [-second] series”, p.326

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite!

  Lewis Carroll

  Writing, Zest, Giving

  Lewis Carroll (2001). “Jabberwocky and Other Poems”, p.33, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.

  David Hume

  Simple, Praise, Reproach

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.262, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Stupid, Writing, Self

  4 Copy quote

• An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Metaphor, Degrade

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical”, p.141

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident - all of those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.

  Arianna Huffington

  Powerful, Leader, Trying

  18 Copy quote

• Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Nerd, Poor

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For it is a plain fact that, most certainly in the West, the writings, works of art, musical compositions which are of central reference, comport that which is "grave and constant" (Joyce's epithets) in the mystery of our condition.

  George Steiner

  Art, Writing, Musical

  George Steiner (1991). “Real Presences”, p.224, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fascist is not just an epithet. Fascist is a proper noun that means a specific thing. It`s a real thing. It`s not always referring to ancient history.

  Rachel Maddow

  Real, Mean, Nouns

  8 Copy quote

• An officer should never speak ironically or sarcastically to an enlisted man, since the latter does not have a fair chance to answer back. The use of profanity and epithets comes under the same headings. The best argument for a man keeping his temper is that nobody else wants it; and when he voluntary throws it away, he loses a main prop to his own position.

  Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall

  Men, Doe, Use

  4 Copy quote

• I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a << racial epithet >>.

  Muhammad Ali

  Vietnamese, Viet Cong

  4 Copy quote

• I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Thinking, Next, Would Be

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.171, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature.

  Criss Jami

  Atheist, Father, Teenager

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.78, Criss Jami

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me.

  Rosa Bonheur

  Imbeciles, Bothered

  17 Copy quote

• The epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe operations which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimentalists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectators.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Beauty, Beautiful, Party

  "Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence". Book by Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw, Preface, 1931.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source