Hard Words Quotes

• All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse, not studied, as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.

  Dorothy Osborne

  Letters, Easy, Charm

  Letter to Sir William Temple, October 1653

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• Hard words indeed break no bones, but many a heart has been broken by them.

  Matthew Henry

  Heart, Broken, Bones

  Matthew Henry (1839). “An Exposition of the Old and New Testament: Wherein Each Chapter is Summed Up in Its Contents: Job-Solomon's Song. 1839”, p.874

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• For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.

  Florence Nightingale

  Diversity, Heaven, Inward

  Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.13, University of Pennsylvania Press

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• A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Children, Heart, Parenting

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.796, Library of America

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• Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.

  Samuel Johnson

  Real, Vocabulary, Class

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales”, p.253

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• I don't think anything could prepare you for whatever fame is. Fame is a very hard word to define cause it means different things to different people for different reasons so I never really think of it as fame, I think of it as part of the job.

  Matt Smith

  Jobs, Mean, Thinking

  "Interview: Matt Smith Says “Doctor Who” Fans Are What Make the Show Brilliant". Interview with Michael Jensen, www.newnownext.com. August 1, 2011.

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• I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

  Anne Frank

  Kindness, Heart, Motherhood

  Anne Frank (1989). “The diary of a young girl”, Pocket

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• The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Long, Metaphysical, Damn

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

  Wayne Gretzky

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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• Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books; how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.

  Richard de Bury

  Mistake, Book, Ignorance

  Richard de Bury (2013). “Philobiblon: A Treatise on the Love of Books”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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• I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success.

  Ignacy Jan Paderewski

  Luck, Secret, Sucess

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• He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Reading, Complaining

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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• Be not frightened at the hard words "imposition," "imposture;" give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares, entertained angels.

  Charles Lamb

  Angel, Giving, Water

  Charles Lamb (1855). “Works, with a Sketch of His Life and Final Memorials”, p.138

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• Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Dog, Women, Fetch

  Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, Mary Roberts Rinehart (2011). “Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are: And Isn't that Just Like a Man”, p.26, The Floating Press

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• Conclusion 1: Boredom= Flared tempers= hard words

  Bisco Hatori

  Boredom, Temper, Conclusion

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• A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes great care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Fashion, Men, Use

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.163, Oxford University Press

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• ...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none
  other will answer his purpose; Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Thinking, Purpose

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• Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.

  Maurice Sendak

  Smart, Writing, Kids

  "Maurice Sendak Sheds Moonlight on a Dark Tale". www.nytimes.com. 1993.

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• Hard words are for fools and cowards.

  Joe Abercrombie

  Coward, Fool, Hard

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• A hard word follows us and later falls upon him who pronounced it, like a ray of vengeance.

  Samael Aun Weor

  Fall, Rays, Vengeance

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• Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

  E. B. White

  Children, Writing, Games

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• Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Real, Firmness, Hard

  Alexander Hamilton (1851). “Correspondence [contin.] 1795-1804; 1777; 1791. Letters of H.G. 1789. Address to public creditors. 1790. Vindication of funding system. 1791”, p.253

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• Normal is such a hard word to use, because everyone's idea of normal is different. Real is what the word is. I think you either live a real life or you live a weird celebrity pseudolife. I think I lead a really real life.

  Sarah Michelle Gellar

  Real, Thinking, Ideas

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• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wall, Thinking, Consistency

  Essays "Self-Reliance" (1841)

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• A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

  Herman Melville

  Communication, Men, Thinking

  "White-Jacket" by Herman Melville, (Ch. 64), 1850.

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