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Vocabulary Quotes

Browse 533 quotes about Vocabulary.

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Vocabulary Quotes

“If I had been born in the 1700′s, presumably children had a bigger vocabulary than I had which means I wouldn’t have been able to recite fairy tales to kids because I’m not smart enough. You know…? I’d have to be like…..uh: In time passed, though not long ago, there lived three pigs in stature, little in number, three, who being of an age both entitled and inspired to seek their fortune did set about to do thusly. When they had traveled a distance, pig numbered first spake saying, “Harken Brethren, head this impetuous realm! Tarry me far from hearth and home I fear we shall fair *snort* not well!” And so being collectively agreed, but individually impaled, the diminutive swine sought each to erect himself an abode.....”

HumorChristianFunnyComedyFairy TaleVocabularyThree Little PigsChristian ComedyJohn Branyan
Author:John Branyan
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“Liberty marveled at how properly people conducted themselves for the most part, greeting the world each morning in a spirit of bemused cooperation and polite assumption, agreeing on words, sharing words, acceding to the same reality of one thing or another. As a child, Liberty had very much wanted her own words, made enthusiastic by a phrase much employed by the adults of the time—tell it in your own words. But they hadn’t meant it. Having your own words just wasn’t feasible. Having your own words isolated you from the rest of humanity. A personal vocabulary indicated a distrustful spirit, a lack of faith in the way things were.”

RealityBehaviorIsolationCooperationVocabularyCommunicating
Book:Breaking and Entering
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“Another socially important variable associated with mental ability is that of marriage, or more specifically that of who marries whom. A consistent finding in several studies of the characteristics of spouses is that there is a tendency for spouses to be similar in some—but not all—aspects of mental ability; in other words, some aspects of mental ability do show substantial “assortative mating.” For example, in a study of married couples, Watson et al. (2004) examined spouses' scores on two mental ability tasks—a vocabulary test and a matrix reasoning test. Interestingly, even though vocabulary and matrix reasoning tend to be correlated with each other (both are strongly g-loaded tests), they revealed quite different results when correlations between spouses were considered. On the one hand, wives' and husbands' levels of vocabulary showed a fairly strong positive correlation, about .45. But, on the other hand, wives' and husbands' levels of matrix reasoning were correlated only about .10. This result is consistent with previous findings, in which spouses have tended to show quite similar levels of verbal comprehension ability, but no particular similarity in mathematical reasoning ability (e.g., Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997). Why should it be the case that spouses tend to be similar in verbal abilities, but not so similar in (equally g-loaded) nonverbal reasoning abilities? One likely explanation—as you might guess—is that two people will tend to have more rewarding conversations if they have similar levels of verbal ability, but that similar levels of nonverbal or mathematical reasoning ability are unlikely to contribute in an important way to any aspect of relationship quality.”

RelationshipsMarriageIntelligenceVocabularyMarried CouplesMatingIqMatchmakingMental AbilityAssortative Mating
Book:Individual Differences and Personality
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“First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas.”

PeopleFirstsDifferentEnergyNaturalCommonSecurityRight NowNotionFocusedGasDependenceVocabularyDifferent PeoplesNatural GasGeopoliticalDifferent MeaningsEnergy Security
Author:Daniel Yergin
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“The word beauty is unavoidable … it accounts for my decision to photograph … There appeared a quality, beauty seemed the only appropriate word for it, in certain photographs, and I am compelled to live with the vocabulary of this new sight … through over many years [I] still find it embarrassing to use the word beauty, I fear I will be attacked for it, but I still believe in it.”

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Author:Robert Adams
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“I feel as though I am trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimension world. The appropriate words, descriptions, and concepts don't even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people's near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I am able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own.”

PeopleWorldFeelsTryingTwoGodAbleChristianThreeLanguageHeavenReligiousMy OwnConceptsAccountsCurrentsLimitationDimensionsAppropriateDescriptionVocabularyNear DeathPortrayalNear Death Experience
Author:Mary C. Neal
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“There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and, perhaps, a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things, of their complexity, fascination, and unexpectedness.”

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Book:An American Childhood
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“People with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life; people with rich vocabularies have a multihued palette of colors with which to paint their experience, not only for others, but for themselves as well.”

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Book:Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial
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“Learn Languages the Right Way. Language acquisition games and abstract communicative method are bullshit. The second-best way to learn a foreign language is alone in a room doing skull-numbing rote memorization of vocabulary, grammar, key phrases, and colloquialisms. The best way is in bed.”

WayGamesLanguageRoomsKeysBedMethodBest WayPhrasesAbstractBullshitRight WayVocabularyGrammarAcquisitionSkullsForeign LanguageSecond BestNumbingLanguage AcquisitionMemorization
Author:Chuck Thompson
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“Bush is almost always clear when he's speaking cruelly. For example, when the subject is the punitive infliction of great pain, there is no problem with his syntax, grammar, or vocabulary, even if he happens to be lying. ... On the other hand, our president is extraordinarily tongue-tied when he's trying, off the cuff, to sound a note of idealism, magnanimity or -- especially -- compassion.”

IfsTryingProblemHandsHappensPainLyingSoundPresidentCompassionClearSubjectsExampleNotesTongueTiedIdealismVocabularyNo ProblemGrammarMagnanimitySyntaxCuffsTongue TiedInfliction
Author:Mark Crispin Miller
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“Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.”

WayNeedsArtRolesSpecialHumilityNeededCapacityCriticismCriticsRecognitionTemporaryIntroducingVocabularyExplainingInjection
Book:The Culture We Deserve
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“[I]n the male sexual lexicon, which is the vocabulary of power, erotica is simply high-class pornography: better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer. As with the call girl and the streetwalker, one is turned out better but both are produced by the same system of sexual values and both perform the same sexual service.”

ValuesGirlClassMalesConsumersVocabularyPornographyLexiconHigh Class
Book:Pornography: men possessing women
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“We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented.”

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Book:Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson: Autobiographical Writings and Essays by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona
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“When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense.”

ThinkingFeelsLongDoeImportantSometimesLyingNightStarsWindImportanceNakedBeachSandGrainVocabularyPillowVery DeepIndescribableGrains Of SandCoconuts
Author:Marlon Brando
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“Conservatives or better, pro-corporate apologists hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right. This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.”

MindInspirationAgeTodayAmericaOpportunitySoundBrainProgressDivineToolsCorporateLiberalismHistorianIndividualismVocabularyGovernanceDegeneratesPlunderAmerica TodayDivine Right
Author:Bill Moyers
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