Quotes and Sayings About Verbs
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[On her recently widowed father's much younger wife:] My father has been very busy in conjugating the verb to love, and I assure you he declines its moods and tenses inimitably.
-- Abby May Alcott -
A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.
-- Aberjhani -
To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.
-- Aleister Crowley -
Fear is only a verb if you let it be. Don't you dare let go of my hand!
-- Andrea Gibson -
James Blish told me I had the worst case of "said bookism" (that is, using every word except said to indicate dialogue). He told me to limit the verbs to said, replied, asked, and answered and only when absolutely necessary.
-- Anne McCaffrey -
In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."
-- Arthur Eddington -
Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.
-- Barbara De Angelis -
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 -
In the history of the concept of number has been adjective (three cows, three monads) and noun (three, pure and simple), and now ... number seems to be more like a verb (to triple).
-- Barry Mazur -
But love is really more of an interactive process. It's about what we do not just what we feel. It's a verb, not a noun.
-- Bell Hooks -
Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages.
-- Benjamin Lee Whorf -
If you can't illustrate 'it', 'it' doens't belong in Physics as a noun! You can't put an article in front. You can't put a verb after!
-- Bill Gaede -
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 -
Every sentence he manages to utter scatters its component parts like pond water from a verb chasing its own tail.
-- Clive James -
A person who uses party as a verb is a person who will walk into a shop and walk out wearing a rubber jumpsuit.
-- Cynthia Heimel -
The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second “you.
-- Dashiell Hammett -
One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb.
-- Edward Sapir -
A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.
-- Elaine de Kooning -
Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.
-- Elie Wiesel -
Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue... I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
-- Elmore Leonard -
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.
-- Elmore Leonard -
Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.
-- Elmore Leonard -
Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.
-- Elmore Leonard -
Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.
-- Emily Giffin -
The top 10 verbs in the English language are all irregular, even though irregular verbs make up only 3 per cent of the language.
-- Erez Lieberman Aiden -
Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.
-- Eric Weiner
