Phrase Quotes

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...' (Isaac Asimov)
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. View quote
Mikhail Bakunin
The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be 'What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?' View quote
Glenn Beck
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. View quote
Guy Debord
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war. View quote
Golda Meir
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: 'a long time ago, in the future.' Let the children see our history, and maybe it will help to shape the future. View quote
Romeo LeBlanc
What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me. View quote
Chris Abani
Unsourced variant: The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way." View quote
Grace Hopper
Those who marry God can become domesticated too it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word ''Love'' means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and ''Ave Maria '' like ''dearest'' is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night. (Graham Greene)
In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? View quote
Carl Rogers
There's a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner's mind.' It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind. View quote
Steve Jobs
His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage. View quote
Henry Fielding
Choice word and measured phrase above the reach Of ordinary men. View quote
William Wordsworth
I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm. View quote
Ogden Nash
There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ''the pursuit of happiness'' is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world. View quote
Malcolm Muggeridge
'Lambe them, lads lambe them' a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time. View quote
Walter Scott
The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern. View quote
Benjamin Disraeli
It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed. View quote
Ismail Kadaré
In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human. (Karen Joy Fowler)
To illustrate what I mean, an apt dancer may be in thorough unison with the others in that particular group, and at the same time reveal a difference in dancing temperament, rhythm or technique; she may phrase, accentuate or actually interpret differently. View quote
Florenz Ziegfeld
It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment. View quote
Samuel Alexander
Neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche had the slightest interest in starting a movement – or a new system, a thought which would indeed have offended them. Both proclaimed, in Nietzsche's phrase, "Follow not me, but you!”. View quote
Rollo May
It takes a little more time to get into the role, but not very much more. In making a record you don't have the sense of projection over a distance as in an opera house. We have this microphone and this magnifies all details of a performance, all exaggerations. In the theater, you can get away with a very large, very grand phrase. For the microphone, you have to tone it down. It's the same as making a film, your gestures will be seen in close-up, so they cannot be exaggerated as they would be in a theater. View quote
Maria Callas