Vocabulary Quotes - Page 13

• Fear isn't in my vocabulary.

  Ernst Happel

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• 'To die is gain!' That kind of talk is absolutely foreign to our modern, spiritual vocabularies. We have become such life worshippers, we have very little desire to depart to be with the Lord.

  David Wilkerson

  Spiritual, Desire, Littles

  David Wilkerson (1982). “Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately?”, Revell

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• It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word 'pessimist' was not in our vocabulary at that time. It's a modern 'invention' which I believe we should 'dis-invent.'

  Zig Ziglar

  Believe, Might, Modern

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• 'Give up... it's time to quit,' I don't think I've ever really accepted those kinds of words in my life or vocabulary.

  Willie Aames

  Giving Up, Thinking, Quitting

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• Within the context of the alchemical vocabulary, the psychedelic experience, as brought to us through plants long in the possession of Aboriginal people, appears to be the identical phenomena.

  Terence McKenna

  Long, People, Psychedelic

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• We form ourselves within the vocabularies that we did not choose, and sometimes we have to reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones.

  Judith Butler

  Sometimes, Form, Rejects

  Source: transadvocate.com

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• I panicked when my son, Jett, stopped eating baby food. He's only two but his food vocabulary is fantastic. He likes my baked tilapia and string beans with chopped garlic. But he really likes pizza. Sometimes every inanimate object to him is pizza.

  Jill Scott

  Baby, Son, Two

  "Jill Scott: 'In Botswana I ate wopani worms. They were terrible. They crawl and have legs'". Interview with John Hind, www.theguardian.com. June 18, 2011.

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• English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Way, Tongue, Language

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• Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.

  Twyla Tharp

  Art, Creativity, Talking

  Twyla Tharp, Mark Reiter (2003). “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”, Simon and Schuster

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• I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women... women tend to eat less... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Children, Men, Differences

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Left Hand Of Darkness”, p.149, Hachette UK

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• The world going insane and evil letting slip the birds of war is no excuse for sloppy vocabulary.

  P. C. Cast

  War, Evil, Bird

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• I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try.

  Alexandra Fuller

  Journey, Thinking, Differences

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• It is said that the American vocabulary has declined by half in the past few decades. It's a tragic instance of desertification following upon monocultural commodity production, the clear-cutting of written and spoken English.

  Stephanie Mills

  Cutting, Past, Half

  Stephanie Mills (2003). “Epicurean Simplicity”, p.130, Island Press

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• An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Humble, Average

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• Every human occupation has it repertoire of stock phrases, within which every man twists and turn until his death. His vocabulary, which seems so lavish, reduces itself to a hundred routine formulas at most, which he repeats over and over.

  Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

  Men, Twists, Routine

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• My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.

  Margaret Edson

  Acquisition, Defense

  Margaret Edson (2014). “Wit: A Play”, p.44, Macmillan

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• They're just words is all. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Dialogue, Powerless

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.

  A. S. Byatt

  Circles, Lines, Crosses

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Aug 04, 2013

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• Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

  Kate Atkinson

  Girl, Emotion, Crumbs

  Kate Atkinson (2010). “One Good Turn: (Jackson Brodie)”, p.135, Random House

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• Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.

  Dean Koontz

  Going Away, Trying, Cliche

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• There's a lot of memorization that goes on in school. You memorize vocabulary words and all these sorts of things.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  School, Memorization, Goes On

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• I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity.

  Vera Wang

  Wedding, Book, Creativity

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• We are writing stories with light and darkness, motion and colors. It is a language with its own vocabulary and unlimited possibilities for expressing our inner thoughts and feelings.

  Vittorio Storaro

  Writing, Light, Color

  By Despina Mouzaki, www.filmfestival.gr.

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• She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.

  Jon McGregor

  Past, Wonder, Nostalgic

  Jon McGregor (2014). “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Threats are the last resort of a man with no vocabulary.

  Tamora Pierce

  Men, Lasts, Resorts

  Tamora Pierce (2014). “Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.614, Random House Books for Young Readers

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