In the index below, the Words About Words quotations are ordered alphabetically by the first word in the quotation ("noise" words such as "a" and "the" are excluded) and the first few words of each quotation are given, as well as as a link to the list of quotations by the author.

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Above all, a book is a ..." Cynthia Ozick
"Abstract words are ancient coins whose ..." Julian Jaynes
"The accent of one's birthplace remains ..." Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld
"The acid test of a good ..." Bernice Rubens
"The act of sitting down and ..." Carl Honore
"Actions are the first tragedy in ..." Oscar Wilde
"Actually if a writer needs a ..." Ernest Hemingway
"The adjective is the banana peel ..." Clifton Fadiman
"Adjectives are the sugar of literature ..." Henry James
"Administrative dialects seem to have been ..." John Ralston Saul
"The advice of their elders to ..." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Affectation is a very good word ..." G. C. Lichtenberg
"Afraid lest he be caught up ..." William Carlos Williams
"After all, when you come right ..." Russell Hoban
"The agitator seizes the word. The ..." Karl Kraus
"Alcohol is barren. The words a ..." Marguerite Duras
"All books are either dreams or ..." Amy Lowell
"All editorial writers ever do is ..." Anonymous
"All good and true book-lovers practise ..." Eugene Field
"All my life I've looked at ..." Ernest Hemingway
"All official institutions of language are ..." Roland Barthes
"All our words from loose using ..." Ernest Hemingway
"All pro athletes are bilingual. They ..." Gordie Howe
"All provincial or bye-phrases come under ..." William Hazlitt
"All slang is metaphor, and all ..." G. K. Chesterton
"All speech, written or spoken, is ..." Robert Louis Stevenson
"All the best stories in the ..." Arthur Christopher Benson
"All the words that I gather, And ..." W. B. Yeats
"All these formulations are important, but ..." Nicholas Lemann
"All words are pegs to hang ..." Henry Ward Beecher
"All writers are thieves; theft is ..." Nina Bawden
"All writing should be selection in ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Also, Sancho, you must not interlard ..." Miguel de Cervantes
"Always do sober what you said ..." Charles Scribner, Jr.
"American is the language in which ..." John Mortimer
"The Americans never use the word ..." Alexis de Tocqueville
"Among the calamities of war may ..." Samuel Johnson
"Among the most fruitful mistakes is ..." Frederic Paulhan
"And every phrase And sentence that ..." T. S. Eliot
"And if, to be sure, sometimes ..." Niccolo Machiavelli
"And this our life, exempt from ..." William Shakespeare
"The angels are so enamoured of ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Another word not (yet) in dictionaries ..." Allan M. Lazarus
"Antiphanes said merrily that in a ..." Plutarch
"Any given word is a bundle, ..." Osip Mandelstam
"Any language is always and forever ..." John McWhorter
"Any man who can write a ..." Raymond Chandler
"An aphorism never coincides with the ..." Karl Kraus
"The aphorism, the apophthegm, in which ..." Friedrich Nietzsche
"Argument, again, is the death of ..." William Hazlitt
"An army of brave new words ..." Leslie Savan
"The art of newspaper paragraphing is ..." Don Marquis
"An art whose medium is language ..." Thomas Mann
"Artists need to be protected from ..." Naomi Klein
"Artists use frauds to make human ..." Kurt Vonnegut
"As a poet and writer, I ..." June Jordan
"As a poet there is only ..." W. H. Auden
"As advertising blather becomes the nation's ..." George F. Will
"As economic and social conditions have ..." John Ralston Saul
"As far as I'm concerned, "whom" ..." Calvin Trillin
"As for style of writing -- ..." Henry David Thoreau
"As for the other part of ..." John Dryden
"As I take up my pen ..." G. C. Lichtenberg
"As our culture changes the language ..." John Algeo
"As sheer casual reading matter, I ..." Albert Jay Nock
"As societies grow decadent, the language ..." Gore Vidal
"As the Internet comes increasingly to ..." David Crystal
"As the language of commercialism has ..." James B. Twitchell
"As we go back in history, ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"As we round the millennium, the ..." Naomi S. Baron
"The assumption that puns are per ..." H. W. Fowler
"At a dinner party one should ..." W. Somerset Maugham
"At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, ..." Studs Terkel
"At painful times, when composition is ..." Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always ..." George Orwell
"Attentiveness is the natural prayer of ..." Nicolas Malebranche
"An author who speaks about his ..." Benjamin Disraeli
"Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter ..." Ellery Sedgwick
"An average English word is four ..." Mark Twain
"The average Southerner has the speech ..." Bill Bryson
"Avoid splitting infinitives." That's the one ..." Geoffrey Nunberg

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Bad language is so much the ..." Paul Fussell
"The bases for historical knowledge are ..." Paul de Man
"The basic rule of human nature ..." Michael Caine
"The basic tool for the manipulation ..." Philip K. Dick
"Battle, n. A method of untying ..." Ambrose Bierce
"Be a little careful about your ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Be who you are! Think for ..." Ken Babstock
"Bear up, brave clerklets, though the ..." Punch
"BEATRICE: Foul words is but foul ..." William Shakespeare
"Beauty in art: the sudden kindled ..." Milan Kundera
"Because in our brief lives we ..." Julian Jaynes
"Because language is the carrier of ..." Louise Bogan
"Before anybody gets too high and ..." David Kipen
"Being an integral aspect of the ..." Victoria Neufeldt
"Being in the dictionary is not ..." Erin McKean
"Believing in the inviolability of the ..." David Crystal
"Belladonna, n. In Italian a beautiful ..." Ambrose Bierce
"The Bellman on the "unmistakable marks" ..." Lewis Carroll
"The best craftsman always leaves holes ..." Dylan Thomas
"The best interviews -- like the ..." Lynn Barber
"The best thing about animals is ..." Thornton Wilder
"The best thing about the English ..." Lynsey Hanley
"Better to write for yourself and ..." Cyril Connolly
"The Betterment of Man is the ..." Garrison Keillor
"Beware the conversationalist who adds "in ..." Robert Morley
"Beyond any shadow of a doubt, ..." Salman Rushdie
"A bibliophile of little means is ..." Pablo Neruda
"A big leather-bound volume makes an ..." Mark Twain
"The biggest cliches often hide deep ..." Bill McKibben
"The bitterest tears shed over graves ..." Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Blows are sarcasms turned stupid: wit ..." George Eliot
"The bold and discerning writer who, ..." Ambrose Bierce
"A book is a mirror: if ..." G. C. Lichtenberg
"A book is a part of ..." Henry Miller
"A book is a version of ..." Salman Rushdie
"A book is like a man—clever ..." John Steinbeck
"A book that furnishes no quotations ..." Thomas Love Peacock
"A book that is shut is ..." Thomas Fuller
"Books and marriage go ill ..." Moliere
"Books are the bees which carry ..." James Russell Lowell
"Books are the compasses and telescopes ..." Jesse Lee Bennett
"Books constitute capital. A library book ..." Thomas Jefferson
"The books one has written in ..." Jean Rostand
"Books that have become classics- books ..." Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"A bore is a man who, ..." Bert Leston Taylor
"Bore, n. A person who talks ..." Ambrose Bierce
"Borrowers of books -- those mutilators ..." Charles Lamb
"The Brahmins say that in their ..." Leo Tolstoy
"Brevity is the sister of ..." Anton Chekhov
"Bright is the ring of words When ..." Robert Louis Stevenson
"Brute force crushes many plants. Yet ..." D. H. Lawrence
"But by "vernacular" I mean far ..." Ralph Ellison
"But don't blame me if some ..." Bill Casselman
"But I have long thought that ..." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"But in so far as we ..." Aldous Huxley
"But let's be honest: Who cares ..." Jesse Sheidlower
"But my main debt, which may ..." John Updike
"But O, sick children of the ..." W. B. Yeats
"But the effort made by the ..." H. L. Mencken
"But what I have most at ..." Jonathan Swift
"But words are things, and a ..." Lord Byron
"Buy good books, and read them; ..." Lord Chesterfield
"By degrees I made a discovery ..." Mary Shelley
""By God," quod he, "for pleynly, ..." Geoffrey Chaucer
"By speaking, by thinking, we undertake ..." Jose Ortega y Gasset
"By such innovations are languages enriched, ..." Miguel de Cervantes
"By the year 2050 -- earlier ..." George Orwell

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Camerado! This is no book;..." Walt Whitman
"Cancer patients are lied to, not ..." Susan Sontag
"The capacity of human beings to ..." H. L. Mencken
"Carnivores eat flesh and meat; piscivores ..." Richard Lederer
"Certain brief sentences are peerless in ..." Jean Rostand
"Certainly so great growing a population, ..." Thomas Jefferson
"Change in language need not be ..." Richard Lederer
"Change is legitimate and inevitable, for ..." Robert MacNeil
"The chief difference between words and ..." Leo Tolstoy
"Children show scars like medals. Lovers ..." Leonard Cohen
"A children's writer should, ideally, be ..." Joan Aiken
"The circle of the English language ..." J. A. H. Murray
"A classic—something that everybody wants to ..." Mark Twain
"The closer the look one takes ..." Karl Kraus
"Comedy: The least controllable use of ..." John Ralston Saul
"Commas in The New Yorker fall ..." E. B. White
"Common experience is the gold reserve ..." Rene Daumal
"The common faults of American language ..." James Fenimore Cooper
"A community is known by the ..." John Algeo
"The companionship of books is unquestionably ..." William Roberts
"A compliment is something like a ..." Victor Hugo
"Confession, alas, is the new ..." Richard Dean Rosen
"Confusion is a word we have ..." Henry Miller
"Considering Language then as some mighty ..." Walt Whitman
"Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no ..." Archibald MacLeish
"Conversation attained immediate vertical takeoff and ..." Seamus Heaney
"Countless new words are born every ..." Allan Metcalf
"A country can be judged by ..." German Proverb
"The covers of this book are ..." Ambrose Bierce
"The crime of book purging is ..." Max Lerner
"Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic ..." Richard Dawkins
"Curiously enough, it seems to be ..." Paul de Man
"The current flows fast and furious. ..." Virginia Woolf
"Custom is the most certain mistress ..." Ben Jonson

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Daddy always said that at the ..." Robert Hellenga
"Dear Mister Language Person: What is ..." Dave Barry
"Decadence is a difficult word to ..." Ernest Hemingway
"The declared meaning of a spoken ..." Peter Carey
"Deconstructionism can also be seen as ..." John Ralston Saul
"The deep and unconscious delight in ..." Andrew Wilkinson
"The defence of the English language...has ..." George Orwell
"A definition is the enclosing a ..." Samuel Butler
"Definition of a slogan: a form ..." Richard Usborne
"Depend upon it that if a ..." Samuel Johnson
"Despots play their part in the ..." Victor Hugo
"The development of vocabulary has been ..." Robert K. Barnhart
"Dialect words—those terrible marks of the ..." Thomas Hardy
"Dictionaries are but the depositories of ..." Thomas Jefferson
"Dictionary is a powerful word. Authors ..." Sydney I. Landau
"A Dictionary is an historical monument, ..." Richard Chevenix Trench
"A dictionary without quotations is like ..." James Sledd
"Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in ..." John Ralston Saul
"The difference between the almost right ..." Mark Twain
"The difference between writing for stage ..." Alan Bennett
"A difference of taste in jokes ..." George Eliot
"Differences among languages, like differences among ..." Steven Pinker
"The difficult part in an argument ..." Andre Maurois
"The dignity of the artist lies ..." G. K. Chesterton
"Diplomacy is the art of saying ..." Will Catlin
"Diplomacy is the lowest form of ..." E. B. White
"A diplomat is a person who ..." Caskie Stinnett
"Direct speech is anathema to leaders ..." David Olive
"Disappointment, when it involves neither shame ..." Samuel Johnson
"The discipline of the written word ..." John Steinbeck
"Discretion of speech is more than ..." Francis Bacon
"Discretion of speech is more than ..." Francis Bacon
"Do not appear so scholarly, I ..." Moliere
"Do not dismiss what the old ..." The New Jerusalem Bible
"Do not read, as children do, ..." Gustave Flaubert
"Do not the most moving moments ..." Marcel Marceau
"Do you know that conversation is ..." W. Somerset Maugham
"Don't join the book burners. Don't ..." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Don't use words too big for ..." C. S. Lewis
"Doublethink means the power of holding ..." George Orwell
"Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with ..." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"Dr. X's real name was a ..." Neal Stephenson
"Drawing on my fine command of ..." Robert Benchley
"Due to my general aversion to ..." David Sedaris

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Each year brings new problems of ..." W. H. Auden
"The easiest way to give the ..." George Mikes
"Editing is the same as quarreling ..." Harold Ross
"Editing should be, especially in the ..." James Thurber
"Eleven syllables, many of them of ..." Joseph Chamberlain
"Emerson said that language is fossil ..." Jorge Luis Borges
"English [is] a robust, swarthy tongue, ..." Constance Hale
"English became what it did from ..." Ruth Wajnryb
"The English Bible—a book which, if ..." Thomas Babington Macaulay
"English grammar is so complex and ..." Bill Bryson
"English is a kind of vacuum ..." David Crystal
"English is a language that simply ..." Simon Winchester
"English is a living language, which ..." Robert P. Henry
"English is a stretch language; one ..." William Safire
"English is destined to be in ..." John Adams
"English is dominant in a way ..." John McWhorter
"English is just as much big ..." Randolph Quirk
"English is not a killer language, ..." Ruaridh Nicoll
"The English language as it is ..." Robert Lowth
"The English language has become a ..." Tom McArthur
"The English language hasn't got where ..." Carl Sandburg
"The English language is an arsenal ..." Stephen Fry
"The English language is like a ..." Robert Burchfield
"The English language is nobody's special ..." Derek Walcott
"The English language is not a ..." Sir James Murray
"The English language is the richest ..." P. G. Wodehouse
"English usage is sometimes more than ..." E. B. White
"English, like all languages, is a ..." Robert Claiborne
"The English-speaking world may be divided ..." H. W. Fowler
"Ephemeral English is the living language, ..." Michael Adams
"Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of ..." Ambrose Bierce
"Euphemisms are not, as many young ..." Quentin Crisp
"Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, ..." Pearl S. Buck
"Even the most ardent structuralist would ..." Bill Bryson
"Even the most onomatopoeic words -- ..." Steven Pinker
"Even though society's neologisms are normally ..." Chris Noon
"Every age has a language of ..." Augustus Hare
"Every artist writes his own ..." Havelock Ellis
"Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing ..." H. L. Mencken
"Every autobiography is concerned with two ..." W. H. Auden
"Every book is, in an intimate ..." Robert Louis Stevenson
"Every burned book or house enlightens ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every great man nowadays has his ..." Oscar Wilde
"Every increase of knowledge, whether real ..." Samuel Johnson
"Every individual ought to know at ..." Joseph Brodsky
"Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum ..." James Baldwin
"Every man feels instinctively that all ..." James Russell Lowell
"Every new word is a new ..." Daniela Fischerova
"Every other author may aspire to ..." Samuel Johnson
"Every other author may aspire to ..." Samuel Johnson
"Every poet knows the pun is ..." Louis Untermeyer
"Every quotation contributes something to the ..." Samuel Johnson
"Every reader finds himself. The writer's ..." Marcel Proust
"Every tense and mood of a ..." John Ralston Saul
"Every word carries its own surprises ..." George A. Miller
"Every word has three explanations and ..." Irish Proverb
"Every word was once a poem. ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every year there are many thousands ..." Allan Metcalf
"Everybody has a right to pronounce ..." Winston Churchill
"Everybody should eavesdrop once in a ..." Thornton Wilder
"Everyday language is a part of ..." Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Everyone has always regarded any usage ..." Evelyn Waugh
"Everyone plays with language or responds ..." David Crystal
"Everyone, including even the metaphysician in ..." H. L. Mencken
"Everything can change, but not the ..." Italo Calvino
"Everything in the world exists to ..." Stephane Mallarme
"Everything is becoming science fiction. From ..." J. G. Ballard
"Everything that we have so far ..." Edward Sapir
"Everywhere I have sought rest and ..." Thomas A Kempis
"An exaggeration is a truth that ..." Kahlil Gibran
"Exercise your words. Try them out ..." William Sloane
"The existence of good bad literature—the ..." George Orwell
"The expression of a man's face ..." Charles Dickens
"The extreme pleasure we take in ..." Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld
"The exuberance that leads human beings ..." Jerry Dunn

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on ..." Aldous Huxley
"A fair realization of the incredible ..." Benjamin Lee Whorf
"Far from being vulgar or frivolous ..." Gary Egan
"A favourite proclamation of alarmists is ..." Robyn Maler
"A feature of the second Elizabethan ..." H. W. Fowler
"The few Latin phrases I am ..." William F. Buckley Jr.
"Few speeches which have produced an ..." Lord Rosebery
"A few years ago I did ..." Nicholson Baker
"Fidelity to the subject's thought and ..." Janet Malcolm
"Finality is not the language of ..." Benjamin Disraeli
"Finding a name for something is ..." Howard Rheingold
"Finding the inappropriate word -- the ..." John Carey
"Fine words butter no ..." British Proverb
"Fine words! I wonder where you ..." Jonathan Swift
"First drafts are for learning what ..." Bernard Malamud
"The first principle of a free ..." Adlai Stevenson
"Fishing baskets are employed to catch ..." Chuang Tzu
"Folks don't like to have somebody ..." Harper Lee
"A fool and his words are ..." William Shenstone
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that ..." Nicholson Baker
"For a large class of cases—though ..." Ludwig Wittgenstein
"For a novelist, a given historic ..." Milan Kundera
"For all of us, grave or ..." George Eliot
"For books are more than books, ..." Amy Lowell
"For books are not absolutely dead ..." John Milton
"For centuries, the English-speaking peoples have ..." Robert Claiborne
"For God, for Country and for ..." James Thurber
"For him who has eyes to ..." Harold D. Lasswell
"For I have neither wit, nor ..." William Shakespeare
"For insight into human affairs I ..." Freeman J. Dyson
"For Jung, etymology carried great significance ..." Russell A. Lockhart
"For last year's words belong to ..." T. S. Eliot
"For me, words on a page ..." Alberto Manguel
"For men use, if they have ..." Sir Thomas More
"For most of us the rules ..." Bill Bryson
"For my own part I think ..." James Boswell
"For of all sad words of ..." John Greenleaf Whittier
"For proverbs are the pith, the ..." John Florio
"For the most part our words ..." John Moore
"For Truth is as impossible to ..." John Milton
"For we which now behold these ..." William Shakespeare
"For what, after all, is a ..." Richard Chevenix Trench
"For whatever is truly wondrous and ..." Herman Melville
"For words are but the images ..." Francis Bacon
"For words are wise men’s counters ..." Thomas Hobbes
"For your born writer, nothing is ..." Catherine Drinker Bowen
"A foreign language is more easily ..." German Proverb
"Formerly we used to canonise our ..." Oscar Wilde
"Free speech is the whole thing, ..." Salman Rushdie
"Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with ..." Norman O. Brown
"French rhetorical models are too narrow ..." Camille Paglia
"The Frenchman is right: "Language is ..." Mahmoud El-Kati
"The frequent use of the bad ..." P. H. Davison
"From my earliest days I have ..." Patrick Campbell
"From now on, ending a sentence ..." Winston Churchill
"From one casual of mine he ..." James Thurber
"From one perspective, a certain irony ..." David Foster Wallace
"From the moment I picked up ..." Groucho Marx
"The fruit grower ... capitalizes the ..." Louis Untermeyer
"Fumbling for a word is everybody's ..." Anthony Burgess
"The future author is one who ..." Thornton Wilder

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"The genius of a democratic people ..." Alexis de Tocqueville
"The German language "speaks Being," while ..." Martin Heidegger
"The Germans have an inhuman way ..." Mark Twain
"Get a few language types together, ..." Patricia T. O'Connor
"The gift of language is the ..." Lewis Thomas
"Give 'em words; Pour oil into their ..." Ben Jonson
"Give me books, fruit, French wine ..." John Keats
"Give the people a new word ..." Willa Cather
"Give your tongue more holidays than ..." Scottish Proverb
"Go, gentlemen, every man unto his ..." William Shakespeare
"God will not take you to ..." The Koran
"Good authors, too, who once knew ..." Cole Porter
"Good communication is stimulating as black ..." Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"Good company and good discourse are ..." Izaak Walton
"Good critical writing is measured by ..." Raymond Chandler
"Good music is very close to ..." Denis Diderot
"A good newspaper, I suppose, is ..." Arthur Miller
"The good parts of a book ..." Ernest Hemingway
"Good shot, bad luck and hell ..." Virginia Graham
"A good story cannot be devised; ..." Raymond Chandler
"A good word is as a ..." The Koran
"The goodness of the true pun ..." Edgar Allan Poe
"Grammar is the logic of speech, ..." Richard Chevenix Trench
"Grammar, with its mixture of logical ..." Marguerite Yourcenar
"Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, ..." George Farquhar
"Great art speaks a language which ..." Robert Menzies
"The great enemy of clear language ..." George Orwell
"A great many complimentary things have ..." Robertson Davies
"The great mass of human beings ..." George Orwell
"Great people talk about ideas, average ..." Fran Lebowitz
"A great writer creates a world ..." Cyril Connolly
"The greater amount of truth is ..." Edgar Allan Poe
"The greatest difference between the cross-references ..." Edward Mendelson
"The greatest masterpiece in literature is ..." Jean Cocteau
"The greatest thing by far is ..." Aristotle

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"The habitude of pleasing by flattery ..." Walter Savage Landor
"Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay ..." Eric Raymond
"The hard necessity of bringing the ..." Nelson Algren
"He drinks his drinks in a ..." Ogden Nash
"He had sung against all battles, ..." Lord Byron
"He is one of those orators ..." Winston Churchill
"He mobilized the English language and ..." Edward R. Murrow
"He must also be on his ..." Aneurin Bevan
"He spoke with a certain what-is-it ..." P. G. Wodehouse
"He that will write well in ..." Roger Ascham
"He was a poet who trusted ..." J. D. McClatchy
"He was full of cliché, but ..." Chinua Achebe
"He who wants to persuade should ..." Joseph Conrad
"He writes the worst English that ..." H. L. Mencken
"A healthy male adult bore consumes ..." John Updike
"The hearing ear is always found ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Hemingway was a prisoner of his ..." William Burroughs
"Henry Miller is not really a ..." Gerald Brenan
"Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic ..." George Eliot
"Here, where all is new, no ..." Thomas Jefferson
"He's a wonderful talker, who has ..." Moliere
"High among television's defaults was the ..." Todd Gitlin
"The highest stretch of improvement a ..." Laurence Sterne
"His enemies might have said before ..." Sydney Smith
"His life was that of a ..." Henry James
"His name was Shadow, short for ..." Martin Amis
"His very words are instinct with ..." Percy Bysshe Shelley
"An honest man speaks the truth, ..." William Hazlitt
"Honest plain words best pierce the ..." William Shakespeare
"Hope is the thing with feathers— That ..." Emily Dickinson
"How clever you are, my dear! ..." Oscar Wilde
"How hard it is to make ..." Olive Schreiner
"How ironical that it is by ..." Søren Kierkegaard
"However much you knock at nature's ..." Ivan Turgenev
"Human speech is like a cracked ..." Gustave Flaubert
"Humans mop up words like ..." Jean Aitchison
"Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid ..." James Thurber

[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ]

"I always write a good first ..." Moliere
"I am a dreamer of words, ..." Gaston Bachelard
"I am a painstaking, conscientious, involved ..." Dylan Thomas
"I am always sorry when any ..." Samuel Johnson
"I am an unrepentant, irremediable word ..." Charles Harrington Elster
"I am being frank about myself ..." Henry Kissinger
"I am convinced that the best ..." Omar Nelson Bradley
"I am no friend, therefore, to ..." Thomas Jefferson
"I am not a literary man...I ..." Sir James Murray
"I am not so lost in ..." Samuel Johnson
"I am not so vain to ..." John Locke
"I am not, by the way, ..." Carol Shields
"I am of the firm belief ..." Beryl Bainbridge
"I am omniverbivorous by nature and ..." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"I am so coarse, the things ..." C. S. Lewis
"I am still studying verbs and ..." Carl Sandburg
"I ascribe a basic importance to ..." Frantz Fanon
"I avoid talking before the youth ..." Horace Walpole
"I believe that Brecht did nothing ..." Jean Genet
"I believe the road to hell ..." Stephen King
"I believe there is an ethic ..." Alberto Manguel
"I believe there's no proverb but ..." Miguel de Cervantes
"I can understand German as well ..." Mark Twain
"I cannot think of a greater ..." Lord John Russell
"I can't bear art that you ..." D. H. Lawrence
"I can't understand how a man ..." John Ruskin
"I can't understand the term "anti-aging." Ditto ..." Natasha Singer
"I confess that part of the ..." Michael Pollan
"I consider that that "that" that ..." James Thurber
"I did toy with the idea ..." Groucho Marx
"I distrust the incommunicable: it is ..." Jean-Paul Sartre
"I do not hesitate to read ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I do not know the American ..." Charles Dickens
"I do not know which to ..." Wallace Stevens
"I do not object to people ..." Lord Birkett
"I don't have ugly ducklings turning ..." Maeve Binchy
"I don't think any good book ..." Carlos Fuentes
"I don't think it is always ..." Salman Rushdie
"I don't want to talk grammar. ..." George Bernard Shaw
"I don't wish to sign my ..." Oscar Wilde
"I dwell in Possibility-- A fairer House ..." Emily Dickinson
"I fear those big words, Stephen ..." James Joyce
"I feel a kind of reverence ..." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"I fell in love -- that ..." Dylan Thomas
"I finished on Thursday the novel ..." Anthony Trollope
"I get up in the morning ..." Don Marquis
"I go into my library, and ..." Alexander Smith
"I greet you at the beginning ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I had a linguistics professor who ..." Jeff Stilson
"I hate false words, and seek ..." Walter Savage Landor
"I have a weakness for writers ..." Geoffrey Nunberg
"I have always felt rather sorry ..." Ben Macintyre
"I have grown fond of semicolons ..." Lewis Thomas
"I have never met a person ..." Steven Pinker
"I have often felt as though ..." Sigmund Freud
"I have only made this [letter] ..." Blaise Pascal
"I haven't much opinion of words. ..." Ellen Glasgow
"I hope I've done nothing so monosyllabic ..." Christopher Fry
"I invented the colors of the ..." Arthur Rimbaud
"I know a man -- a ..." Charles Stuart Calverley
"I know one husband and wife ..." Vera Brittain
"I know you lawyers can, with ..." John Gay
"I like to collect little curiousities ..." Tom Stoppard
"I like to do all the ..." Oscar Wilde
"I love metaphor the way some ..." William H. Gass
"I love metaphor. It provides two ..." Bernard Malamud
"I might have been tempted to ..." Manchan Magan
"I never go anywhere without packing ..." Michael Pollan
"I never wanted to be a ..." Iris Murdoch
"I perceived that to express those ..." Marcel Proust
"I personally think we developed language ..." Jane Wagner
"I prefer the honest jargon of ..." Jean Rostand
"I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant ..." Cicero
"I read a poem. I do ..." Ted Joans
"I really do inhabit a system ..." Václav Havel
"I regret that you want to ..." Jacques Barzun
"I said there was a society ..." Jonathan Swift
"I see journalists as the manual ..." Marguerite Duras
"I see that everywhere among the race ..." Sophocles
"I should have no objection to ..." Benjamin Franklin
"I should not talk so much ..." Henry David Thoreau
"I sometimes hold it half a ..." Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian ..." Charles I, King of Spain
"I started off my life in ..." David Sedaris
"I still understand a few words ..." Jean Rostand
"I suppose that writers should, in ..." John Mortimer
"I think "taste" is a social ..." John Updike
"I think of words and especially ..." Lesley Dill
"I think people who try to ..." Erin McKean
"I think that the deliberate invention ..." George Orwell
"I think the relationships that survive ..." Douglas Coupland
"I think, for the rest of ..." Carolyn Wells
"I want no more than to ..." George Seferis
"I want the concentration & the ..." Virginia Woolf
"I was always embarrassed by the ..." Ernest Hemingway
"I was angry with my friend: I ..." William Blake
"I was driven into writing because ..." Evelyn Waugh
"I was getting a little nervous ..." Steve Martin
"I will speak daggers to her ..." William Shakespeare
"I wish our clever young poets ..." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"I would dodge, not lie, in ..." Larry Speakes
"I would earnestly ask my sisters ..." Florence Nightingale
"I would rather have as my ..." John Updike
"I would say that the dislike, ..." Walter Redfern
"i. Never use a metaphor, simile, ..." George Orwell
"The idea that the human mind ..." Steven Pinker
"Ideas improve. The meaning of words ..." Guy Debord
"If a people have no word ..." Edgar Z. Friedenberg
"If a poem is not forgotten ..." W. S. Merwin
"If an essential part of Web ..." Tim O'Reilly
"If an iron door could be ..." Charles Dickens
"If Dictionaries are to be the ..." Thomas Jefferson
"If everything is perfect, language is ..." Jean Baudrillard
"If he be so resolved, I can ..." William Shakespeare
"If language is not correct, then ..." Confucius
"If men do not keep on ..." John Updike
"If Miss means respectably unmarried, and ..." Angela Carter
"If my books had been any ..." Raymond Chandler
"If science fiction is the myth ..." Ursula K. Le Guin
"If the essayist is a sculptor, ..." Hendrik Hertzberg
"If the eyes are the windows ..." Josh Wilson
"If the native speakers want to ..." William Safire
"If the secret of being a ..." Remy de Gourmont
"If to talk to oneself when ..." Baltasar Gracian
"If we can "boondoggle" ourselves out ..." Franklin D. Roosevelt
"If we divine a discrepancy between ..." Charles Horton Cooley
"If we use common words on ..." George Eliot
"If when a businessman speaks of ..." Louis B. Lundborg
"If words are to enter men's ..." J.B. Phillips
"If words, as Samuel Johnson said, ..." Hilary Bower
"If you are of the opinion ..." Fran Lebowitz
"If you can't get a job ..." Max Hastings
"If you want a new word ..." Allan Metcalf
"If you want to change the ..." Howard Rheingold
"If you want to tell the ..." Salman Rushdie
"If you want truth to go ..." Charles Spurgeon
"If you were to make little ..." Oliver Goldsmith
"If you're a writer, a real ..." Robertson Davies
"If you've ever heard yourself saying, ..." Erin McKean
"I'll publish, right or wrong: Fools ..." Lord Byron
"The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called ..." Thomas Carlyle
"I'm glad you like adverbs -- ..." Henry James
"I'm not comfortable with the style ..." Geoffrey Nunberg
"I'm replacing some of the timber ..." Hammond Innes
"I'm well aware there is little ..." Lynne Truss
"The image of therapy as a ..." Russell A. Lockhart
"Imagine if you heard your child's ..." Lauren Slater
"Imagine the Lord talking French! Aside ..." Clarence Day
"Impenetrability! That's what *I* say!" ..." Lewis Carroll
"The impertinent compositors have taken it ..." J. R. R. Tolkien
"Impropriety is the soul of ..." W. Somerset Maugham
"In all pointed sentences, some degree ..." Samuel Johnson
"In all speech, words and sense ..." Ben Jonson
"In conversation, the game is to ..." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In dagger-contests, and the artillery of ..." Jonathan Swift
"in every language even deafanddumb..." e. e. cummings
"In fact, words are well adapted ..." J. B. S. Haldane
"In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer ..." Daniel J. Boorstin
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, ..." Henry David Thoreau
"In Ireland, for a few years ..." John Millington Synge
"In language, the ignorant have prescribed ..." Richard Duppa
"In literature the ambition of the ..." George Bernard Shaw
"In Modern English Usage Fowler makes ..." Sir Ernest Gowers
"In most cases a favorite writer ..." Charles Horton Cooley
"In plain truth, lying is an ..." Michel de Montaigne
"In poetry, in which every line, ..." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"In poetry, wonder is coupled with ..." Gaston Bachelard
"In small things as in large ..." H. L. Mencken
"In surveys of lie-perception levels, 75 ..." John Ralston Saul
"In the end, language changes because ..." Jesse Sheidlower
"In the end, though, the meaning ..." Geoffrey Nunberg
"In the United States ... anyone ..." S. I. Hayakawa
"In the works of the better ..." Joseph Brodsky
"In this century the writer has ..." Don DeLillo
"In words as fashions the same ..." Alexander Pope
"In writing biography, fact and fiction ..." Catherine Drinker Bowen
"In writing, you discover interior sonorities ..." Gaston Bachelard
"The individual in his use of ..." Otto Jespersen
"The inflated style is itself a ..." George Orwell
"Inscribe all human effort with one ..." Robert Browning
"Internet users are continually searching for ..." David Crystal
"The ironic individual practices a style ..." Jedediah Purdy
"Irony ... may be defined as ..." Julian Barnes
"Irregularity in grammar seems like the ..." Steven Pinker
"Is there any place where there ..." Kahlil Gibran
"Is there no Latin word for ..." Hilaire Belloc
"Is there not..." William Wordsworth
"It can hardly be a coincidence ..." Douglas Adams
"It cannot in the opinion of ..." Winston Churchill
"It could be said that these ..." Goronwy Rees
"It does not behoove us to ..." Mario Pei
"It has always been accepted, and ..." Horace
"It has always been my practice ..." Edward Gibbon
"It is a cliche that most ..." Stephen Fry
"It is a curious fact of ..." John Cassidy
"It is a difficulty in writing ..." W. Somerset Maugham
"It is a good rule in ..." P. G. Wodehouse
"It is a sad fact about ..." W. H. Auden
"It is a sad truth, but ..." Oscar Wilde
"It is a safe rule to ..." Alfred North Whitehead
"It is advantageous to an author ..." Samuel Johnson
"It is all too rare today ..." Jim Richard Carrigan
"It is almost a truism to ..." Charles Harrington Elster
"It is almost everywhere the case ..." G. C. Lichtenberg
"It is better to err on ..." Clive James
"It is clearly important to play ..." Walter Redfern
"It is easier to describe the ..." C. S. Lewis
"It is in every case desirable ..." Richard Chevenix Trench
"It is in vain to set ..." Friedrich Waismann
"It is indeed acceptable practice to ..." Richard Lederer
"It is language which speaks, not ..." Roland Barthes
"It is my belief that there ..." Hugo Black
"It is not so much the ..." Eric Hoffer
"It is not the literal past, ..." Brian Friel
"It is nothing to say that ..." Charles Dickens
"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) ..." Jorge Luis Borges
"It is only by language that ..." Oscar Wilde
"It is only in the country ..." Cyril Connolly
"It is remarkable how often the ..." David Crystal
"It is still not enough for ..." Rene Daumal
"It is strange that there should ..." Samuel Johnson
"It is the enormous and variegated ..." Robert Claiborne
"It is the nature of aphoristic ..." Susan Sontag
"It is the word, blossoming as ..." George Mackay Brown
"It is time for dead languages ..." Natalie Clifford Barney
"It is true that English was ..." Bill Bryson
"It is well within the order ..." Anna Wickham
"It may be that the evolution ..." Lewis Thomas
"It may be that the single ..." John Ralston Saul
"It may be that universal history ..." Jorge Luis Borges
"It may help to think of ..." Allan Metcalf
"It must be frustrating to work ..." Jerry Seinfeld
"It must be remembered, that while ..." Samuel Johnson
"It never bored them to hear ..." E. M. Forster
"It rarely adds anything to say, ..." Paul Goodman
"It takes more time and effort ..." Ivan Illich
"It takes two to speak the ..." Henry David Thoreau
"It wasn't by accident that the ..." Ernest Hemingway
"It were as wise to cast ..." Percy Bysshe Shelley
"It's a damn shame we have ..." Eileen Atkins
"It's apparent that we can't proceed ..." Richard Dean Rosen
"It's good that everything's gone, except ..." Derek Walcott
"It's hard enough to write a ..." Jack Lemmon
"It's not so much that I ..." Andy Rooney
"It's splendid to be a great ..." Gustave Flaubert