Phrases Quotes - Page 18

• When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Song, Moving, Talking

  "Sing Your Prayers: An Interview With Bobby McFerrin". Omega Institute Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2012.

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• If I sing "you broke my heart, you left me flat," everyone knows exactly what that means - they know the story. But if I sing a line that's plaintive or wailing, people can experience their own set of emotions and their own story. Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It's open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Song, Mean, Heart

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• [Political] prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

  George Orwell

  Political Language, House, Together

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• How beautiful that after 2,000 years, no one can outdo "God is love." It's the most perfectly concise, hopeful phrase in history.

  Mark Hart

  Beautiful, Years, Hopeful

  Mark Hart (2013). “Tweet Inspiration: Faith in 140 Characters (or Less)”, p.29, Franciscan Media

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• Now, here is my definition of success: A few simple Disciplines practiced every day. Do you see the distinction? A few disciplines... Here's a little phrase we've all heard, An apple a day keeps the doctor away. And my question to you is, What if that's true? How simple and easy is that plan?

  Jim Rohn

  Simple, Doctors, Apples

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• Freedom has only the meaning with which men endow it. It is not enough to pay lip service to the concept of religious liberty. We must pay heart service to it as well, else it remains an empty phrase instead of a living reality.

  Kenneth Keating

  Religious, Heart, Reality

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• Phrases and their actual meanings: My teacher has never liked me. Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly.

  Erma Bombeck

  Dog, Teacher, Children

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• When we hear phrases like 'New World Order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers.

  Pat Buchanan

  Order, Safety, World

  "On a Right Wing and a Player" by Peter Carlson, www.washingtonpost.com. September 26, 2002.

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• You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Lying, Mind, Idle Chatter

  'Patience' (1881) act 1

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• Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem. ... Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. ... The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

  Ronald Reagan

  Moving, Government, Views

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• If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up."

  Bruce McCall

  Attitude, Shut Up, Neighbor

  Bruce McCall (1999). “Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada”, Vintage

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• The phrase I like to use to describe my sense of time-a play on comparative literature - is comparative time.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Play, Use, Literature

  "Amichai, Israel´s Most Important and Influential Poet, Dies at 76". www.nytimes.com. September 22, 2000.

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• Ever since the introduction of psychoanalysis there have been too many terms to excuse behavior and phrases that can be [used] to explain everything.

  Sean Connery

  Excuse, Behavior, Used

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• A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing.

  Bryan A. Garner

  Opposites, Ideas, Interesting

  Bryan A. Garner (2013). “Legal Writing in Plain English, Second Edition: A Text with Exercises”, p.14, University of Chicago Press

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• The following is a phrase we don't hear enough but that I sincerely mean (and our culture needs to hear more often): I love being married.

  Mark Hart

  Mean, Love Is, Needs

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• That phrase "hocus-pocus" started out as "hocus-pocus dominocus", and was, in the beginning, a mocking imitation of the holy incantations of the Catholic Church's Latin liturgy. So say the lexicologists.

  L. M. Boyd

  Latin, Catholic, Church

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• A Latin phrase says: De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Speak no ill of the dead. But it is better to say this way: Speak the truth of the living and speak the truth of the dead!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Latin, Way, Speak

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• History never recorded this phrase: 'The Mass of Wise.' Because the wise is not too abundant to form masses!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Wise, Form, Mass

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• I collect words and phrases for naming the children of my brush.

  Gene Black

  Children, Brushes

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• I use the phrase "fellow citizen" all the time when referring to the - people always say, "The American people, the American people." I prefer the phrase fellow citizen because there's a power in that, there's a responsibility, there's a duty in using that phrase fellow citizen.

  Tavis Smiley

  Responsibility, People, Citizens

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• People used to say, "Clapton is God." That was a phrase that people attributed to him, and he was a guitar hero back in his day. He chose a different path. And you can read about it, but he was really at the top of his game back then. I think he's one of the greatest rock players who've ever lived. His timing and everything was just so on.

  Michael Angelo Batio

  Hero, Player, Thinking

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• A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.

  William Shakespeare

  Fashion, Men, Brain

  1594-5 King, of Armado. Love's Labour's Lost, act1, sc.1, l.162-5.

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• It is true that writers often owe their most inspired thoughts, their most extraordinary phrases, to their generous typesetters, who assist their flights of fancy with so-called typographical errors.

  E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Creativity, Errors, Fancy

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• To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Real, Expression, Ideas

  Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1974). “Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays”, p.159, Oxford University Press

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• The line of 'Make America great again,' the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody's using it, they are all loving it. I don't know I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it.

  Donald Trump

  Years, America, Lines

  "Trump brings brighter charge against Cruz" by Ben Kamisar, thehill.com. March 23, 2015.

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