Phrases quotes
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An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.
-- A. S. Byatt -
Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
-- Agnes Repplier -
There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
-- Agnes Repplier -
To define Buddhism without a lot of words and phrases, we can simply say, 'Don't cling or hold on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things as they are.'
-- Ajahn Chah -
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That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.
-- Alan Moore -
I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
-- Alan Price -
I'm pretty good at inventing phrases - you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically* obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Much of the day I have busied myself making notes on the small parts in Shakespeare, often nameless, which are rewarding to the actor if only he'll not dismiss them as beneath his dignity. If I can work it up into a talk I might call it, 'Only a cough and a spit ' -the phrase so often used by actors to explain away a lack of opportunity.
-- Alec Guinness -
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Please phrase your answer in the form of a question.
-- Alex Trebek -
A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
-- Alexander Smith -
If the same phrase in the same place created the right effect, I was perfectly prepared to use it every time. I wasn't worried that I wasn't improvising.
-- Alexis Korner -
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No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.
-- Alfred de Vigny -
Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase.
-- Ali Smith -
It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.
-- Anton Seidl -
It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.
-- Aristophanes -
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A truce to idle phrases!
-- Aristophanes -
Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.
-- Arthur Oncken Lovejoy -
After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.
-- Arthur Smith -
There's nothing I find quite as annoying as the phrase 'I told you so.'
-- Ayelet Waldman -
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Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.
-- Baz Luhrmann -
If the women's movement can be summed up in a single phrase, it is 'the right to choose'.
-- Beatrice Faust -
Feminism as a theoretical enterprise is approached differently by Black women depending on where we are. There are more reformist Black women who tend to use the phrase "Black feminism".
-- Bell Hooks -
Well I've never used that phrase before, but yes she is bootylicious.
-- Ben Affleck -
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Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.
-- Benjamin Hoff -
There are things that Scotsmen get and other people don't get in the dialogue. Scottish characters can be pinpointed by a phrase, targeted very quickly.
-- Bill Forsyth -
If ask 100 Arkansans about the phrase, 'the public option,' or 'a public option,' you'll get 100 different impressions about what that means.
-- Bill Halter -
I saw a specialist who asked me 'Are you familiar with the phrase faecal impaction?'. I said I think I saw that one with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.
-- Bob Monkhouse -
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And for those of you that dropped out of high school, remember the famous phrase: 'Do you want fries with that?'
-- Bobby Heenan -
Telling is not selling; never make a statement if you can phrase it in the form of a question.
-- Brian Tracy -
The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?
-- Brion Gysin -
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man who has time to spare."
-- C. Northcote Parkinson -
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The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
-- C.P. Snow -
What is this much repeated phrase 'active citizen' supposed to mean? The active citizens are the ones who took the Bastille.
-- Camille Desmoulins -
The universe is so immense that it appears immutable, and that the duration of a planet such as that of the earth is only a chapter, less than that, a phrase, less still, only a word of the universe’s history.
-- Camille Flammarion -
There you have it: an expensive higher education based on sloganeering, on pat, trite phrases that substitute moral posturing for political reasoning. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism.
-- Camille Paglia -
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I always had plenty of ideas. I didn’t exactly have them. They grew—little by little, a half an idea at a time. First, part of a phrase and then a person to go with it. After a person, then a little corner of a place for the person to be in.
-- Carol Emshwiller -
Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.
-- Cate Tiernan -
Tell a thousand people to draft a letter, let them debate every phrase, and see how long it takes and what you get.
-- Catherine the Great -
I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.
-- Charles Dickens -
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They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
-- Charles Mingus -
The phrase public office is a public trust, has of last become common property.
-- Charles Sumner -
What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.
-- Christopher Hitchens -
If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.
-- Claude Bernard -
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These repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind.
-- Claude M. Bristol -
It’s only when you’ve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that phrase “It’s a small worldâ€. It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.
-- Clive Barker -
All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light.
-- Clive James -
There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.
-- D. H. Lawrence -
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Ever hear of the phrase, Banging you're head on a brick wall?" Ah, but you forget, Darren, vampires can break brick walls with their heads.
-- Darren Shan -
The phrase 'sodomized by a bratwurst poltergeist' suddenly flew through my mind.
-- David Wong -
Avoid theatrical flourishes - the phrases that sound so damned good that they stand up and beg to be recognized as "good writing," and therefore must be struck from the text.
-- Donald Spoto -
Just begin a story with such a phrase as 'I remember Disraeli - poor old Dizz! - once saying to me, in answer to my poke in the eye,' and you will find me and Morpheus off in a corner, necking.
-- Dorothy Parker -
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People will kill you over time, and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like 'be realistic.'
-- Dylan Moran -
People in hotels strike no roots. The French phrase for chronic hotel guests even says so; they are called dwellers sur la branche.
-- E. V. Lucas -
Eventually you'll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you've copped and begin to put your own mark on them
-- Eddie Van Halen -
We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.
-- Edward Abbey -
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World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky -
I still care for you, you know.. That phrase again. Everyone cares for me. They just don't know how to love me.
-- Ellen Hopkins -
I always get a little uppity when I hear the phrase 'TV actor.' It's like saying you're a magazine reporter. I was in the theater for ten years before I ever had a TV audition.
-- Eric McCormack -
Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?
-- Erica Jong -
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Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith.
-- Francois Quesnay -
The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
-- Fred Allen -
Emotionally, I was affected a lot by Rage Against the Machine, not specifically the literal intention of the words or what it was about, but the feel, the sound, those phrases that got me.
-- Fred Durst -
Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.
-- Fritjof Capra -
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I don't use the phrase 'I love you' very often, but I say it every time I talk to my children.
-- George Hamilton -
The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.
-- George Henry Lewes -
A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
-- George Orwell -
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
-- George Orwell -
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Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.
-- George Sand -
The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.
-- George Will -
I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days.
-- Geraldine Brooks -
It has been said that if the opening phrase of a classical minuet can be fitted to the words "Are you the O'Reilly who owns this hotel?" then it was written by Haydn; if it can't then it wasn't.
-- Gervase Hughes -
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Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.
-- Gilbert Highet -
Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
-- Gillian Flynn -
Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in the phrase: To create a harmony.
-- Gino Severini -
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.
-- Golda Meir -
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The most damaging phrase in the language is: `It's always been done that way.'
-- Grace Hopper -
The only phrase I've ever disliked is, 'Why, we've always done it that way.' I always tell young people, 'Go ahead and do it. You can always apologize later.'
-- Grace Hopper -
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.
-- Hannah Arendt -
I usually start with a title or maybe a little rhyme or phrase.
-- Harlan Howard -
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I get a little nauseated, perhaps, when I hear the phrase 'freedom of the press' used as freely as it is, knowing that a large part of our proprietorial press is not free at all.
-- Harold Wilson -
I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stone cutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.
-- Harriet Doerr -
For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting.
-- Haruki Murakami -
Never use the phrase: 'buy my book' - ever.
-- Heather Hart -
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True religion is a union of God with the soul, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or in the apostle's phrase, it is Christ formed in us.
-- Henry Scougal -
Those who are addicted to the phrase "to use a vulgarism" expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.
-- Henry Watson Fowler -
Prayer, to the patriarchs and prophets, was more than the recital of well-known and well-worn phrases-it was the outpouring of the heart.
-- Herbert Lockyer -
It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.
-- Hortense Calisher -
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Stop scapegoating immigrants[Stop using] outrageous phrases like 'illegal aliens.'
-- Howard Dean -
You can still have chemistry on screen without getting on with the person. But it just makes your job a lot easier if you don't have to gird your loins, if that's not quite the right phrase, every time you're going to do a scene with that person.
-- Hugh Dancy -
With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
-- Hunter S. Thompson -
Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.
-- Irving Howe -
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When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice.
-- Isaac Babel -
It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.
-- Ismail Kadaré -
I'm an aspiring writer. I hate that phrase. You're either a writer or you're not.
-- Jack Black -
I've always had a will to succeed, to win, however you phrase it.
-- Jack Kent Cooke -
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I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer.
-- Jack Smith -
When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.
-- Jack Smith -
The day that music is taken for free by the majority is the day that the phrase "sell out" doesn't exist any more.
-- Jack White -
She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways. Ways that made him believe that he could do anything. Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.
-- Jacquelyn Frank -
