Superlatives Quotes

• People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Change, People, Details

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• The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Art, Use, Advertising

  Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

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• Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.

  Tryon Edwards

  Real, Needs, Speak

  Tryon Edwards (1853). “The World's Laconics: Or, The Best Thoughts of the Best Authors”, p.356

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• Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. De-accession euphemisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

  William Safire

  Editing, Long, Sound

  55 Copy quote

• When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Morning, Lovely, Ordinary

  52 Copy quote

• From scarlet to powdered gold, to blazing yellow, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of your shimmering corselet, out to the tip that like an amber thorn begins you, small, superlative being, you are a miracle, and you blaze

  Pablo Neruda

  Beauty, Yellow, Orange

  Pablo Neruda (1997). “Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda”, HarperCollins

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• Woman is superlative; the best leader in life, the best guide in happy days, the best consoler in sorrow.

  Johann Gottfried Seume

  Women, Leader, Sorrow

  48 Copy quote

• Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Progress Of Society, Progress, Cult

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

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• A man coined to superlative must expect that his every statement will be taken with some caution

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Taken, Writing, Men

  14 Copy quote

• Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases 'biggest in the world,' 'finest in the world,' are on all lips.

  Isabella Bird

  United States, Phrases, World

  Isabella L. Bird (2012). “A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains”, p.128, Courier Corporation

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• For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe.

  Tim O'Brien

  Thinking, Squares, Roots

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• "Best in the world," "lowest price in existence, " etc are at best claiming the expected. But superlative of that sort are usually damaging. They suggestion looseness of expression, a tendency to exaggerate, a careless truth. They lead readers to discount all the statements that you make

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Writing, Expression, Etc

  15 Copy quote

• A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

  E. B. White

  Enthusiasm, Carefree, Reader

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

  Dorothy Parker

  Umbrella

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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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

  7 Copy quote

• Poets and writers who are in love with the superlative all want to do more than they can.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Poetry, Want, Exaggeration

  7 Copy quote

• The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Morning, Weather

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860). “The Conduct of Life”, p.187

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• [Chicago] is the greatest and most typically American of all cities. New York is bigger and more spectacular and can outmatch it in other superlatives, but it is a "world" city, more European in some respects than American.

  John Gunther

  Respect, New York, Cities

  5 Copy quote

• Faction is to party what the superlative is to the positive. Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of all parties.

  Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

  Party, Evil, Political

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• There emanates from superlatives a destructive force.

  Elias Canetti

  Force, Emanate, Destructive

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• Examples of exaggeration can be found in almost any advertising medium. The use of the superlative is altogether too prevalent. 'The finest,' 'the best,' 'the greatest,' 'the purest,' 'the most economical,' and so on ad infinitum, are hurled at the public everywhere. Surely not all products of the same class can be the best or the finest.

  Daniel Starch

  Class, Example, Use

  Daniel Starch (1914). “Advertising: Its Principles, Practice, and Technique”

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• Wilderness is rapidly becoming one of those aspects of the American dream which is more of the past than of the present. Wilderness is not only a condition of nature, but a state of mind and mood and heart. It cannot be confined to the museum-case status—seen only as a passing diorama from superlative throughways.

  Ansel Adams

  Dream, Heart, Past

  Ansel Adams (1981). “Celebrating the American Earth: a Portfolio”

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• This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

  Dorothy Parker

  Horse, Liars, Bird

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception than any and all others, before them or after them, or they have truly stated astonishing things which they saw and heard.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Art, Men, Skills

  Simon Greenleaf (1847). “An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice: With an Account of the Trial of Jesus”, p.47

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• Such exaggerations have been so common that the public takes them with a grain of salt and partly excuses them as being due to the advertiser's license of self-assertiveness. Nevertheless, the fact remains that superlative generalities are weak arguments and far less convincing than a statement of facts. Much advertising copy would be improved immensely by doing away with brag and substituting actual facts about the merits of the article.

  Daniel Starch

  Self, Facts, Merit

  6 Copy quote