Hyphens Quotes

• Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Heart, Patriotic, Men

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.30, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.

  Walter Bagehot

  Cabinets, States, Function

  'The English Constitution' (1867) 'The Cabinet'

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• One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.

  Winston Churchill

  Regard, Avoided

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• The only difference between resigning and resigning is a hyphen.

  Tim McCarver

  Sports, Differences, Resigning

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• It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen

  Frank McCourt

  Wonder, Enough, Ifs

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Tis: A Memoir”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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• Hyphens, like cats, are capable of arousing tenderness or shudders.

  Pamela Frankau

  Cat, Tenderness, Capable

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• Tea - that perfume that one drinks, that connecting hyphen.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Tea, Drink, Perfume

  Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.161, NYU Press

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• Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.

  Augustus William Hare

  Life, Matter, Spirit

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”

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• This morning I deleted the hyphen from "hell-bound" and made it one word; this afternoon I redivided it and restored the hyphen.

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Morning, Writing, Afternoon

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• There are some men who in a fifty-fifty proposition insist on getting the hyphen too.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Men, Fifty, Propositions

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• My karma's the comma that puts you inside of a coma,
  Hyphen, dot, dot, semi-colon, leave you semi-swollen.
  Question mark, you pregnant?
  Oh you're not? I love you, period.

  Chino XL

  Karma, Rap, Love You

  Song: Wordsmith

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• Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

  Martin Gardner

  Quotation Marks, Want, Chips

  Martin Gardner (2006). “Aha! A Two Volume Collection: Aha! Gotcha Aha! Insight”, MAA

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• You know, mind allows us to portray in different sensory modalities, visual, auditory, olfactory, you name it, what we are like and what the world is like. But this very, very important quality of subjectivity, this quality that allows us to take a distant view and say, "I am here, I exist, I have a life and there are things around me that refer to me." That me-ness, M-E-hyphen, that is what really constitutes consciousness.

  Antonio Damasio

  Views, Names, Mind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• There is a phase in the life of every copy editor when she is obsessed with hyphens.

  Mary Norris

  Editors, Phases, Obsessed

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.99, W. W. Norton & Company

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• All flowers are flirtatious - particularly if they carry hyphenated names. The more hyphens in the name, the flirtier the flower. The one-hyphen flowers - black-eyed Susan; lady-smock; musk-rose - may give you only a shy glance and then drop their eyes; the two-hyphen flowers - forget-me-not; flower-de-luce - keep glancing. Flowers with three or more hyphens flirt all over the garden and continue even when they are cut and arranged in vases. John-go-to-bed-at-noon does not go there simply to sleep.

  Willard R. Espy

  Flower, Sleep, Eye

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• I must beg you to indulge me in the matter of hyphens.... You will find that I have marked out a great many in the proofs. We arein danger of Germanizing our printing by using them so much, and I have a very decided preference in the matter.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Style, Matter, Great Men

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• Like italics and hyphens, quotation marks are to be used as sparingly as possible. They should light the way, not darken it.

  Eric Partridge

  Writing, Light, Quotation Marks

  Eric Partridge (2003). “You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies”, p.125, Routledge

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• Some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Names, Needs, United States Of America

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.30, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.

  Toni Morrison

  Struggle, Mean, Ethnicity

  Toni Morrison (2007). “Playing in the Dark”, p.38, Vintage

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• I guess none of the sides of my hyphen are particularly subtle cultures. But perhaps there is also a sense that these characters are all parentless - every character in this book is feral in some way - without any guidance in their upbringing. They find no choice but to seek refuge in extreme behaviors.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Book, Character, Choices

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Chris Eagles flew in on Shaun Wright-Phillips, so hard he almost broke the hyphen.

  Henry Winter

  Soccer, Football, Player

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• Meditation is the use of symbols, not abstractions. A symbol is something alive. It is a hyphen between one reality and another.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Reality, Meditation

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