Vocabulary Quotes - Page 14

• If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Music, Misunderstood, Way

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• We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.

  Alberto Manguel

  Technology, Years, Delight

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.214, Vintage Canada

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• Im haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words. Ive been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.

  Richard Brautigan

  Childhood, Feelings, Events

  Richard Brautigan (1995). “Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away”, p.125, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

  Jane Yolen

  Hate, Book, Fire

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• What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Men, Should Have, Adjectives

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• there was a time before you but I can't remember it now a time before your beauty and I were formally introduced I'm sure I lived without you but I don't remember how can't imagine living without these feelings you've produced just one glance and my life was redrawn just one word and my vocabulary changed I asked the time and you said 'what's the hurry?' you asked my name and I almost forgot

  David Levithan

  Names, Feelings, Remember

  David Levithan (2008). “The Realm of Possibility”, p.35, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I'm a man of few words." "If you read more, you might have a larger vocabulary.

  Bill Watterson

  Men, Few Words, Might

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• Tell a story! Don't try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first!

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Style, Trying

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• With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

  Lytton Strachey

  Latin, Exception

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.22, Delphi Classics

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• I remove the work should from my vocabulary forever. Should is a word that makes a prisoner of me. Every time I say should, I am making myself wrong, or I am making someone else wrong. I am, in effect, saying I am not good enough.

  Louise Hay

  Not Good Enough, Forever, Should

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• I'm eradicating the word Protestant even out of my vocabulary. .. I'm protesting anything. .. it's time for Catholics and non-Catholics to come together as one in the Spirit and one in the Lord.

  Paul Crouch

  Catholic, Together, Spirit

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• I do not think the gay population has been all that rabid for gay marriage. Note that I do not use the words 'gay community.' Expunge that expression from your vocabulary. We are not a community.

  Larry Kramer

  Gay, Thinking, Expression

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• As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.

  Jon Krakauer

  Mean, People, Evil

  Jon Krakauer (2013). “Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith”, p.17, Pan Macmillan

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• I'm very educated and can give you somewhat of a vocabulary, but I don't get to the philosophical side.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Philosophical, Giving, Sides

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• Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.

  Anna Deavere Smith

  Race, People, Loaded

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• Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

  Henry Petroski

  Design Process, Study, Case Studies

  "ASK OCE Interview: Five Questions for Dr. Henry Petroski". Interview with Henry Petroski, appel.nasa.gov. July 20, 2006.

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• I like vocabulary and I actually read a book called 'Word Freak,' which is about a guy who basically went into competitive Scrabble for a year. But having a big vocabulary and being good at Scrabble are not the same thing.

  Stephen Amell

  Book, Years, Guy

  "Stephen Amell On “Queer” Beginnings And The New 'Arrow' Queen". Interview with Jim Halterman, www.newnownext.com. August 27, 2012.

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• The worst part of it is you don't know if he's barking at an owl, the moon or a burglar!" "That's one of the drawbacks of a limited vocabulary!

  Charles M. Schulz

  Moon, Owl, Drawbacks

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• There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Family, Light

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• One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Dressing Up, Clothes

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

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• I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Moving, Reading

  "The Poetics of Reverie". Book by Gaston Bachelard, 1960.

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• A backup plan means somewhere in my head, I think I might fail and that word is not in my vocabulary. Plus I'm too talented to fail.

  Malorie Blackman

  Mean, Thinking, Might

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• I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Lying, Responsibility

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• Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

  Carl Sandburg

  Diction, Today, Language

  Carl Sandburg (2015). “Honey and Salt”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You might wish to revisit your understanding of the word everything.” Gregory turned to his mother. “Vocabulary and comprehension were never her strong suits.” Violet rolled her eyes. “Every day I marvel that the two of you managed to reach adulthood.” “Afraid we’d kill each other?” Gregory quipped. “No, that I’d do the job myself.

  Julia Quinn

  Mother, Strong, Jobs

  Julia Quinn (2006). “On the way to the wedding”

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