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Vocabulary Quotes

Browse 533 quotes about Vocabulary.

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Vocabulary Quotes

“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.”

ShouldWritingLittlesPersonsLongBitsCan DoLittle BitClothesDressesCommittedEveningAshamedPetBad ThingsHouseholdEmbarrassedVocabularyDressingsDressing UpLong WordsCuteness
Book:On Writing
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“You might wish to revisit your understanding of the word everything.” Gregory turned to his mother. “Vocabulary and comprehension were never her strong suits.” Violet rolled her eyes. “Every day I marvel that the two of you managed to reach adulthood.” “Afraid we’d kill each other?” Gregory quipped. “No, that I’d do the job myself.”

TwoMightEyeJobsMotherStrongWishUnderstandingSuitsAdulthoodHer EyesVocabularyVioletComprehension
Book:On the way to the wedding
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“I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.”

KnowsMenWayTryingLongCountryReasonUsedLyingResponsibilityCitizensConsciousResponsibleGuiltGuiltyLuxuryAfrican AmericanNot InterestedVocabularyPersonal ResponsibilityCitizenry
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.”

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Author:Gaston Bachelard
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“there was a time before you but I can't remember it now a time before your beauty and I were formally introduced I'm sure I lived without you but I don't remember how can't imagine living without these feelings you've produced just one glance and my life was redrawn just one word and my vocabulary changed I asked the time and you said 'what's the hurry?' you asked my name and I almost forgot”

SaidI CanFeelingsRememberNamesImagineChangedJust OneGlancesVocabularyOne WordWithout You
Book:The Realm of Possibility
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“Gypsy dance is never just to be dancing. Instead it seems to be a part of an immense and significant non-verbal vocabulary of Gypsy communication and behavior. It is at the heart of an essential transformation, a transcended state, an escape from the realities of their daily lives to a more satisfying state of mind.”

MindHeartStatesRealitySeemsCommunicationEssentialsBehaviorTransformationDancingDanceSignificantDaily LifeState Of MindSatisfyingImmenseVocabularyGypsy
Author:Kate Magowan
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“We receive experience from nature in a series of messages. From these messages we extract a content of information: that is, we decode the messages in some way. And from this code of information we then make a basic vocabulary of concepts and a basic grammar of laws, which jointly describe the inner organization that nature translates into the happenings and the appearances we meet.”

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Author:Jacob Bronowski
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“Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries - it is all new to them.”

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Author:Joan Aiken
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“At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.”

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Author:Jorge Luis Borges
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“In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.”

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Book:The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany
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“I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.”

ShouldTryingBelieveHumansDoeCountryRealityMovingPurposeFallI BelieveJusticeAttitudeIssuesRightsGroupsShapesApproachStandardsPerformancesUniversalVictimHuman RightsDevelopingCollectivesCampsStereotypeVocabularyAccusedJointsComplacencySlippingDeveloping CountriesCustodiansAccusers
Author:Mary Robinson
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