Verbs Quotes

• Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.

  Martha Graham

  Nouns, Theater

  55 Copy quote

• If you know how to handle the verbs, you know how to handle the language. Everything else is just vocabulary.

  Michel Thomas

  Vocabulary, Language, Handle

  "Speak French with Michel Thomas" by Michel Thomas, Disc 5, March 29, 2001.

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• Life is a verb, not a noun.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Love, Nouns, Life Is

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1904). “Human Work”, p.203, Rowman Altamira

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• A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting. What makes the difference? The verb.

  Constance Hale

  Lying, Differences, Energy

  19 Copy quote

• We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

  Stephen Fry

  Writing, Thinking, Doe

  "Stephen Fry reveals new BBC TV series" by Tim Lusher, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2010.

  18 Copy quote

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• You only need a heart full of grace

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Heart, Greatness, Helping Others

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.222, Beacon Press

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• Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  College, Helping Others, Greatness

  33 Copy quote

• If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

  William Zinsser

  Fall, House, Nails

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.18, Harper Collins

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• Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

  Mary Oliver

  Adjectives And Adverbs, Fifty, Cents

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.90, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. [...] You only need a heart full of grace.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Heart, Helping Others, Greatness

  "The Drum Major Instinct". Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, February 4, 1968.

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• So many problems are solved simply by knowing enough verbs.

  Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Knowing, Problem, Enough

  7 Copy quote

• Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Roots, Prose, Happens

  Interview with Crystal Wilkinson, appalachianheritage.net. November 20, 2014.

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• A garden without its statue is like a sentence without its verb.

  Joseph Beach

  Art, Garden, Design

  Joseph Warren Beach (1925). “Meek Americans: & Other European Trifles”

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• Mother is a verb, not a noun.

  Shonda Rhimes

  Inspirational, Mother, Nouns

  20 Copy quote

• 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

• Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb.

  Annie Dillard

  Writing, Used, Adverbs

  11 Copy quote

• God is a verb, not a noun.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Nouns

  17 Copy quote

• In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.

  Franz Liszt

  Franz Liszt (1998). “Franz Liszt”, Oxford University Press

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• Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior.

  Susan Forward

  Passion, Love Is, Romance

  8 Copy quote

• Knowledge needs to be a verb.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Needs

  8 Copy quote

• I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.

  Carl Sandburg

  Adjectives, Nouns, Study

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I think there simply comes a point at which you're beating your head against the wall with revision, when you're making something different but not better. For me, revision usually has more to do with making the language prettier, finding clearer images, using more active verbs.

  Mary J. Miller

  Wall, Thinking, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Whatever you want to say, there is only one word to express it, only one verb to give it movement, only one adjective to qualify it.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Writing, Giving, Adjectives

  13 Copy quote

• No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence: Two tanker trucks has just overturned in Alaska, spilling a totel of 10,000 gallons of beer onto a highway. two would find an error in subject-verb agreement, two would find an error in spelling, and six would find a sponge and drive north.

  Mike Nichols

  Beer, Agreement, Skills

  19 Copy quote

• The whole life lies in the verb seeing.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Lying, Whole Life, Seeing

  14 Copy quote