Idiom Quotes - Page 2

• What goes around, comes around.

  Willie Nelson

  Karma, Respect, Revenge

  Willie Nelson, Turk Pipkin (2006). “The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart”, p.33, Penguin

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• Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

  John Millington Synge

  Mean, Men, Thinking

  John Millington Synge (1999). “The Aran Islands”, p.18, Northwestern University Press

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• As far as the style, I can't say there is one definite style. I probably feel most comfortable writing in a tonal idiom, with considerable, if not extreme chromaticism.

  Marc-Andre Hamelin

  Writing, Style, Feels

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. November 8, 2013.

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• Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

  Ralph Bakshi

  Kids, Wizards, Fantasy

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. May 25, 2004.

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• Yes, but I view Frank's music as fully composed. In other words, the arrangements can work for any idiom such as a rock band or an orchestra. Frank was a brilliant arranger and could make his music work in any context. He proved that tour after tour and album after album.

  Dweezil Zappa

  Music, Rocks, Views

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• You can't judge a book by its cover, can you?

  Cao Cao

  Book, Judging, Judging A Book By Its Cover

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• You can't buy time or save it, common idioms notwithstanding. You can only spend it.

  Eric Zorn

  Time, Common

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• All that glitters is not gold.

  William Shakespeare

  Empty Vessels, Gold, Glitter

  David Schajer, William Shakespeare (2012). “Shakespeare's Premiere of Richard III”, p.75, David Schajer

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• I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you begin to see it, you'll need sunglasses to combat the glare.

  Sophia Amoruso

  Believe, Sunglasses, Needs

  Sophia Amoruso (2014). “#GIRLBOSS”, p.100, Penguin

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• A God in the hand is worth two in the bush.

  Frederick Buechner

  Faith, Latin, Hands

  Frederick Buechner (2009). “Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith”, p.2, Zondervan

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• Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.

  Aesop

  Wisdom, Literature, Fables

  Aesop, General Press (2016). “Aesop's Fables: A collection of 284 moral stories”, p.29, GENERAL PRESS

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• I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.

  Paul Keating

  Trying, Use, Advantage

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

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• The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words.

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Inspiring, Revenge, People

  Maxine Hong Kingston (2010). “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”, p.62, Vintage

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• And from the first declension of the flesh
  I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
  Into the stony idiom of the brain.

  Dylan Thomas

  Thoughtful, Men, Thinking

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

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• A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Lovely, Mozzarella, Evening

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.10, A&C Black

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• The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart.

  Willa Cather

  Notebook, Attitude, Heart

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.83, U of Nebraska Press

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• The general misunderstanding of a work of art is often due to the fact that the key to its spiritual content and technical means is missed. Unless the observer is trained to a certain degree in the artistic idiom, he is apt to search for things which have little to do with the aesthetic content of a picture. He is likely to look for pure representational values when the emphasis is really upon music-like relationships.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Mean

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

  Christina Baker Kline

  Song, Love You, Writing

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• Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

  Charles Mingus

  Writing, Men, Style

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• A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  May, Matter, Made

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees (1975). “Philosophical remarks”, Barnes & Noble

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• My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions–which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mirrors, Flying, Black

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.414, Vintage

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• The dishes of the present day are very light, and they have a particular delicacy and perfume. The secret has been discovered of enabling us to eat more and to eat better, as also to digest more rapidly....The new cookery is conductive to health, to good temper, and to long life....Who could enumerate all the dishes of the new cuisine? It is an absolutely new idiom. I have tasted viands prepared in so many ways and fashioned with such art that I could not imagine what they were.

  Louis-Sebastien Mercier

  Art, Light, Long

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• There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Wise, Gratitude, Humble

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process ?

  Christopher Hitchens

  Availability, Speak, Process

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.252, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

  Sergei Prokofiev

  Musical, Virtue, Imitation

  "Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences". Book by Sergei Prokofiev, Edited by S. Shlifstein and translated by Rose Prokofieva, p. 7, 1960.

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