Sentences Quotes - Page 13

• The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work-especially his first full-length book-and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.

  Paul Johnson

  Book, Writing, Perfect

  4 Copy quote

• There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Moving, Writing, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Pain, Writing

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup... A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.

  Andre Dubus

  Book, Cutting, Twenties

  Andre Dubus (2011). “Meditations from a Movable Chair”, p.49, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another

  David Lodge

  Curiosity, Desire, Surrender

  David Lodge (2011). “The Campus Trilogy: Changing Places; Small World; Nice Work”, p.240, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the down-to-earthness that made the pioneers succeed was expressed in a sentence: It takes pretty good [people] to get along with water ditches in a dry time, and not quarrel.

  George A. Smith

  Water, People, Dry

  9 Copy quote

• I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

  Richard Powers

  Reading, Past, Years

  5 Copy quote

• The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.

  Richard Cecil

  God, Character, Obedience

  Richard Cecil, Josiah Pratt (1857). “Remains and Miscellanies of the Rev. R. Cecil: To which is Prefixed, a View of His Character”, p.244

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion" - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.

  Paul Goodman

  Add, Modesty, Opinion

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't stand a sentence until it sounds right.

  John McPhee

  Writing, Sound, I Can

  13 Copy quote

• To translate, one must have a style of his own, for the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.

  Paul Goodman

  Thinking, Style, Nuance

  8 Copy quote

• During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.

  John Adams

  Together, Revolution, Three

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography”, p.511

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• "What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe.

  John Newton

  Christian, Mother, Prayer

  John Newton, John Cecil (1831). “The works of the Rev. John Newton ...: containing, an authentic narrative, etc., letters on religious subjects, cardiphonia, discourses intended for the pulpit, sermons preached in the parish church of Olney, a review of ecclesiastical history, Olney hymns, poems, Messiah, occasional sermons, and tracts, to which are prefixed, Memoirs of his life, &c. by the Rev. John Cecil”, p.379

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who are learning to compose and arrange their sentences with accuracy and order are learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order.

  Hugh Blair

  Thinking, Order, Accuracy

  6 Copy quote

• To slay the sinner is then the first use of the Law, to destroy the life and strength wherein he trusts and convince him that he is dead while he lives; not only under the sentence of death, but actually dead to God, void of all spiritual life, dead in trespasses and sins.

  John Wesley

  Spiritual, Law, Void

  John Wesley, John Emory (1835). “The Works of the Late Reverend John Wesley, A.M.: From the Latest London Edition with the Last Corrections of the Author, Comprehending Also Numerous Translations, Notes, and an Original Preface, Etc”, p.313

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being. Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept.

  Sam Harris

  Our World, Abuse, Might

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, p. 23, 2006.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• A significant number of pages and sentences that the administration wants to keep in a classified status have already been released publicly, some of it by public statements of the leadership of the CIA and the FBI.

  Bob Graham

  Leadership, Numbers, Want

  4 Copy quote

• The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Luxury, Hours, Wells

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1979). “Five novels”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• What the devil to do with the sentence "Who the devil does he think he's fooling?" You can't write "Whom the devil- ".

  Paul Goodman

  Writing, Thinking, Devil

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Distance, Party

  4 Copy quote

• It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction.

  David Mitchell

  Construction, Adept

  7 Copy quote

• Staying in a marriage without love is like serving a life sentence with an incompatible cell mate.

  Jeanne Phillips

  Women, Love Is, Cells

  4 Copy quote

• There's another way to edit the sentence, which is to add a comma before the second 'which.' The survivor is struggling toward 'some resolution,' not a specific resolution that the mind may never find. The final clause is an appended thought, not a conclusion of the previous clause: 'Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution, which it may never find.'

  Robert Anderson

  Struggle, Mind, Survivor

  5 Copy quote

• No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort 's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, Thinking, Objectivity

  "Mysteries". Book by Colin Wilson, 1978.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In school, every period ends with a bell. Every sentence ends with a period. Every crime ends with a sentence.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, School, Humor

  28 Copy quote