Phrase Quotes - page 8

People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party... As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do. (Chuck Palahniuk)
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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
I would not hesitate to say that nine out of ten of the critics of the peace movement get the argument turned upside down. "You cannot change human nature" has become a sort of incantation with those critics. Perhaps you cannot "change human nature" - I don't indeed know what the phrase means. But you can certainly change human behavior, which is what matters, as the whole panorama of history shows. View quote
Norman Angell
For me, a poem starts when a felicitious phrase springs to mind. View quote
Marianne Moore
I saw a specialist who asked me 'Are you familiar with the phrase faecal impaction?'. I said I think I saw that one with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas. View quote
Bob Monkhouse
I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again. View quote
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It's only when you've lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that phrase "It's a small world”. It isn't. It's a vast, devouring world, especially if you're alone. View quote
Clive Barker
No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart. View quote
Alfred de Vigny
And where, for God's sake, does that wretched, utterly dishonest phrase "coalition forces” come from? There is no "coalition” in this Iraq war. There are the Americans and the British and a few Australians. That's it. View quote
Robert Fisk
How many wicked intentions climb aboard a pure and innocent phrase, after it is already on its way! It is enough to make one suspect that lying is, many a time, as involuntary as breathing. View quote
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase? (Gillian Schieber Flynn)
Tishlin's dubious look indicated he wasn't totally convinced this phrase contributed enormously to the information-carrying capacity of the language. View quote
Iain Banks
Wonder, Carlyle declared, is the beginning of philosophy. It is not wonder, but rather the social enthusiasm which revolts from the sordidness of mean streets and the joylessness of withered lives, that is the beginning of economic science. Here, if in no other field, Comte's great phrase holds good: "It is for the heart to suggest our problems; it is for the intellect to solve them.... The only position for which the intellect is primarily adapted is to be the servant of the social sympathies." View quote
Arthur Cecil Pigou
I do not now pretend to define justifying faith, or to determine precisely how much is contained in it, but only to determine thus much concerning it, viz. That it is that by which the soul, which before was separate and alienated from Christ, unites itself to him, or ceases to be any longer in that state of alienation, and comes into that forementioned union or relation to him; or to use the scripture phrase, it is that by which the soul comes to Christ, and receives him; and this is evident by the Scriptures using these very expressions to signify faith. John vi. 35-39. 'He that cometh to me, shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me, shall never thirst... View quote
Jonathan Edwards (theologian)
I think it was when I got to the butterflies -- in that brief, beautiful image comprising life, death and technology -- that the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on end. All at once, the pleasure I took in reading was altered irrevocably. Before then I had never noticed, somehow, that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot but of language. And not merely of pretty words and neat turns of phrase, but of systems of imagery, strategies of metaphor. View quote
Michael Chabon
The style in which it was written told me much: I found that a man who cannot phrase his thoughts cleanly on paper probably has no thoughts worth notice. View quote
Robert Silverberg
Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago... for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?” The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. "I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don't love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They'll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go. "I lost my wife, my son, while away battling for big things. They needed me, but I had to go off trying to save the world.” Powhatan snorted at the last phrase. "Today I fight for my people, for my farm-for smaller things-things I can hold. View quote
David Brin
"You only need fear the bees if you've broken the law.” That familiar phrase was used to justify every encroachment on citizens' liberty. View quote
Michael Moorcock
To you, who have been struck, maligned or martyred, I can bring the news, which I wish to carry more than the frail value of a casual rhetorical phrase: soon we shall win. Before your columns, all our oppressors will fall. Forgive those who struck you for personal reasons. Those who have tortured you for your faith in the Romanian people, you will not forgive. Do not confuse the Christian right and duty of forgiving those who wronged you, with the right and duty of our people to punish those who have betrayed it and assumed for themselves the responsibility to oppose its destiny. Do not forget that the swords you have put on belong to the nation. You carry them in her name, In her name you will use them for punishment-unforgiving and unmerciful. Thus and only thus, will you be preparing a healthy future for this nation. View quote
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right! it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising! View quote
John Godfrey Saxe
I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon. (John Fante)
The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society. View quote
Roy Jenkins
The prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters and secret-service-men, has come awfully true. Nothing has remained of the "beautiful Eretz Israel " but a cloying nostalgia, of which Naomi Shemer was a standard-bearer. A small and gallant state, progressive and (relatively) egalitarian, respected by the world, has become an occupying and looting state, hostage to delirious settlers, full of internal violence and "swinish capitalism" (a phrase coined by Shimon Peres, one of those most responsible for this situation). Throughout the world, the idea of boycotting Israel is gaining ground. View quote
Uri Avnery
he technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the "physical book," a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages. View quote
Art Spiegelman
A phrase much used in political circles in this country is "playing into the hands of". It is a sort of charm or incantation to silence uncomfortable truths. When you are told that by saying this, that or the other you are "playing into the hands of" some sinister enemy, you know that it is your duty to shut up immediately. View quote
George Orwell