Language Quotes - Page 25

• To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

  George Earle Buckle

  Success, Writing, Plain And Simple

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• His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish.

  Charles XII of Sweden

  Kings, Writing, Majesty

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• Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.

  Winston Churchill

  Writing, Simplicity, Intense

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• Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Plain Language, Imagination

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• Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

  Henry Watson Fowler

  Writing, Simple, Wish

  Henry Watson Fowler, Francis George Fowler (1931). “The King's English”, Oxford University Press

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• The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

  Anatole France

  Writing, Sound, World

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• The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Writing, Cutting, Important

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• Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Lying, Writing, Advice

  James J. Kilpatrick (2010). “The Writer's Art”, p.39, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Writing, Superfluous

  "The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow".

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• The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Cutting, Play

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• The shorter and the plainer the better.

  Beatrix Potter

  Writing, Written Language

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• One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

  Quintilian

  Writing, Impossible, Should

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• It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

  William Safire

  Writing, Long, Use

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• No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else's document.

  H. G. Wells

  Writing, Stronger, World

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• Use the smallest word that does the job.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Writing, Doe

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Writing, Use, Using Words

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

  Edward Albee

  Book, Writing, Reality

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

  George Orwell

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Thinking, Literature

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• In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Attitude, Writing, Vocabulary

  Donald E. Westlake (2014). “The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany”, p.28, University of Chicago Press

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• Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Mean, Elude Us

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• The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

  Noam Chomsky

  Education, Teaching, Reading

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• Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren't going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. "It is an old observation," he writes, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric." Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: "Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules."

  Stephen King

  Writing, Police, Add

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.113, Simon and Schuster

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• Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact, there was never such a year. The language of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time was no better and no worse than that of our own - just different.

  Jean Aitchison

  Writing, Years, Vintage

  Jean Aitchison (2013). “Language Change: Progress Or Decay?”, p.14, Cambridge University Press

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• Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

  Bill Bryson

  Fashion, Writing, Matter

  Bill Bryson (1990). “The Mother Tongue”, William Morrow Paperbacks

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