Quotes About Expression

Never commence a sentence with And, But, Since, Because, and other similar weak words and never end it with prepositions, small, weak adverbs or pronouns.

To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance.

A man may be able, educated, refined, of unblemished character, nevertheless if he lack the power to express himself, put forth his views in good and appropriate speech he has to take a back seat, while some one with much less ability gets the opportunity to come to the front because he can clothe his ideas in ready words and talk effectively.

The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half the number. In

Perspicuity demands the clearest expression of thought conveyed in unequivocal language, so that there may be no misunderstanding whatever of the thought or idea the speaker or writer wishes to convey.

subjects. Directions. CHAPTER XIII CHOICE OF WORDS

REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH

Joseph Devlin

The three essentials of the English language are: Purity, Perspicuity and Precision.

the adverb as near as possible to the word it

When writing a letter the street laborer should bear in mind that only the letter of a street-laborer is expected from him, no matter to whom his communication may be addressed and that neither the grammar nor the diction of a Chesterfield or Gladstone is looked for in his language.

Joseph Devlin

comma: John, you are a good man. In numeration, commas are used to express periods of three figures: Mountains 25,000 feet high; 1,000,000 dollars. The Semicolon marks a slighter connection than the

To be in the middle of composing a book is almost always to feel oneself in a state of confusion, doubt and mental imprisonment....

wasn't like today, when if you don't tell your kid you love him every twenty minutes you could go to jail for child abuse.

Vladimir Nabokov, contemning readers who identified with characters in fiction, remarked that the best readers identify with the artist.

what's left of me if you take my work away? I'm not sure there's anything left." "Whaddya mean?

The intent here is not to suppress whatever feelings we may have, but to communicate in a way that fosters connection rather than divisiveness.

The expression of emptiness is love, because emptiness means "emptiness of self." When there is no self, there is no other. That duality is created by the idea of self, of I, of ego. When there's no self, there is a unity, a communion. And without the thought of "I'm loving someone," love becomes the natural expression of that oneness.

That's another thing that pisses me off about that Michelangelo statue of me in Florence. He's got me standing there uncircumcised! Who the fuck did he think I was?

I wonder what kind of person would come out if I ever did erase all my inhibitions at once, what kind of being is bottled up inside me now.

He could not make them shut-up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed.

Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great. We are talking of only a painting.

In fact, though the books came slowly, he was a novelist to his bootlaces, an avid narrator who couldn't stop the story once it had started, who felt the terrors of existence so acutely that he had to tell them and tell them until he'd made them something else.