Quotes about word-choice

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.

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

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

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"!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

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

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.

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

Desire, if it is to be trusted, is to be inspired by a holy vocabulary.

Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 m

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

To speak much is one thing to speak to the point another!

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