Word Choice Quotes

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

Alexis de Tocqueville

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

Rick Perlstein

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like "encyclopedia" and "rhododendron".

A.A. Milne

His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw

Barbara W. Tuchman

CS Lewis's humor supported his exposition but never dominated or diminished it.

Greg Cootsona

The letter is too belligerent. If I were you, I would state the facts as they were, without the pepper and salt. Abraham Lincoln

Harold Holzer

Vocabulary for aggravation is large. Vocabulary for transcendence is elusive.

Jennifer Senior

Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.

Harold Holzer

Offstage, I couldn't put things into words, and that was the one thing I'd always been able to rely on. Putting my feelings into words and praying they wouldn't be able to get out again.

Carrie Fisher

Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys.

Roy Peter Clark

The authors disclose that in less than a century the word "tension" grew from signifying a literal electric charge to a metaphor for emotional stress between two people. Writes Owen Barfield, "The scientists who discovered the forces of electricity actually made it possible for the human beings who came after them to have a slightly different idea, a slightly fuller consciousness of their relationship with one another.

Philip Zaleski

Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible.

Alister E. McGrath

He said it twice because he had never said it before, and it sounded funny.

A.A. Milne

Language itself is so value-laden as to render value-neutrality almost impossible. Growing up in England I was introduced to the American Revolution by a 'footnote' to colonial history about the 'revolt' of the American colonies. Word choice and the organization of material gave the game away.

Arthur F. Holmes

Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.'Huh?'Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.'The manner in which the other were regarding him/her made Can O' Beans feel compelled to continue. 'The word neat, for example, has precise connotations. Neat means tidy, orderly, well-groomed. It's a valuable tool for describing the appearance of a room, a hairdo, or a manuscript. When it's generically and inappropriately applied, though, as it is in the slang aspect, it only obscures the true nature of the thing or feeling that it's supposed to be representing. It's turned into a sponge word. You can wring meanings out of it by the bucketful--and never know which one is right. When a person says a movie is 'neat,' does he mean that it's funny or tragic or thrilling or romantic, does he mean that the cinematography is beautiful, the acting heartfelt, the script intelligent, the direction deft, or the leading lady has cleavage to die for? Slang possesses an economy, an immediacy that's attractive, all right, but it devalues experience by standardizing and fuzzing it. It hangs between humanity and the real world like a . . . a veil. Slang just makes people more stupid, that's all, and stupidity eventually makes them crazy. I'd hate to ever see that kind of craziness rub off onto objects.

Tom Robbins

You can use the power of words to bury meaning or to excavate it.

Rebecca Solnit

He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.

Frank Herbert

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

David Pietrusza

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

Harold Bloom

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Philip Zaleski

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield

Philip Zaleski

Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.

Harold Holzer

House Speaker Thomas Reed could destroy an argument or expose a fallacy in fewer words than anyone else. His language was vivid and picturesque. He had a way of phrasing things which was peculiarly apt and peculiarly his own.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Lincoln on a desire to hear Horace Greeley speak: "In print, every one of his words seems to weigh about a ton.

Harold Holzer

At times, said the founder of the Chicago Tribune, Lincoln seemed to reach into the clouds and take out the thunderbolts.

Harold Holzer

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

Harold Holzer

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

Harold Bloom

Words and magic are two powerful forces that can change the world.

Amy Neftzger

Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!

Lewis Carroll

Word Choice Quotes

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