The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.

I have a kind of remarkable ability to, for want of a better phrase, get what I want. I kind of project. I guess it's called dreaming.

We should quit using phrases like 'turning points' and 'tipping points.' There's been multiple turning points, multiple tipping points.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

Those who are addicted to the phrase "to use a vulgarism" expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.

Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases.

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

Hugo Chavez has tried to steal an inspiring phrase - 'Patria o muerte, venceremos.' It does not belong to him. It belongs to a free Cuba.

Prayer, to the patriarchs and prophets, was more than the recital of well-known and well-worn phrases-it was the outpouring of the heart.

Musing on the phrase 'waste of time.' So much more complex than it appears. Many 'wastes of time' small talk, daydreaming are imperatives.

Love or perish" we are told and we tell ourselves. The phrase is true enough so long as we do not interpret it as "Mingle or be a failure.

They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.

I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem.

The phrase what I want struck me. It contains so much entitlement, so many complications, but encompasses only what a person doesn't have.

I would like to be remembered, well... the Mexicans have a phrase, 'Feo fuerte y formal'. Which means; he was ugly, strong and had dignity.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

Ever hear of the phrase, Banging you're head on a brick wall?" Ah, but you forget, Darren, vampires can break brick walls with their heads.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

I used to have a phrase: Liberalism is spreading misery equally. And now the ruling class throughout Washington seems to have adopted this.

We have retained the forms and phrases of a republic, but in reality we are living under an oligarchy, not of courtesan, but of bureaucrats.

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.

Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. Whoever came up with that phrase I wanted his greasy head on a silver platt

The words I use Are everyday words and yet are not the same! You will find no rhymes in my verse, no magic. There are your very own phrases.

If ask 100 Arkansans about the phrase, 'the public option,' or 'a public option,' you'll get 100 different impressions about what that means.

There is no more embarrassing thing in my life than the fact that I have actually uttered the phrase, 'I would like to order the Ginsu Knife.'

I generally write music first and then hum out the vocal. Sometimes I'll take a phrase that I use as a placeholder and just write around that.

I dont love the phrase balancing work and family. It sets up this idea of scales of justice with work on one side and family on the other side.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.

The metal of economic theory is in Marx's pages immersed in such a wealth of steaming phrases as to acquire a temperature not naturally its own.

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.

Funny the only two times we use the phrase "seeing someone" are when we are referring to being in a a relationship or getting psychological help.

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

What passes for an original opinion is, generally, merely an original phrase. Old lamps for new - yes; but it is always the same oil in the lamp.

But when we sit together, close,’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.

No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books.

It's incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.

The best timed joke or the best timed phrase comes at spontaneous moments and just relies on me as the host to be very quick, and that's what I do.

The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.

One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

I love the phrase, 'Somebody's going to have a good day today, so it might as well be me.' I feel like you bring everything to the character, I hope.

Ever since the introduction of psychoanalysis there have been too many terms to excuse behavior and phrases that can be [used] to explain everything.

Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge

To me an anthology gives meaning to the phrase, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Even if those individual parts are really f-ing hot.

I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers - where you repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation', and 'To conclude'.

You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

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