Ralph Fiennes Quotes

I hope that my ideas attract a lively dialogue, even if my sentences are simple. Simple sentences have always served me well. And I don't use semicolons. It's hard to read anyway, especially for high school kids. Also, I avoid irony, too. I don't like people saying one thing and meaning the other.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

My purpose in public address and in speech is really encapsulated in three C's: clear, concise, correct. No overblowing rhetoric or anything like that. As simple as possible: clear, concise, correct.

Muddy language is not confined to policies alone. Each of you has seen replies to simple questions in which the meaning was lost through hopelessly obscure wording. When a person writes to the Veterans Administration, he is entitled to an easily understood, frank, and courteous reply. If our replies cannot be understood, they are not only not worth writing, but they simply create additional work.

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused -- in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible.

I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.

I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.

The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.

I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.

I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

Your partner cannot read your mind, so talk to your partner about how you're feeling and what you need.

Great men, like nature, use simple language.

I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.

I don't need nobody tryin' to make me over -- I just wanna live simple and free.

On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.

If you start to give of yourself, be it ever so simple a fashion, the world will observe your spirit and show you many needs that you can supply. There are a hundred ways of giving away little margins of time you will never miss, which could be riches to someone.

There are no more simple images... The world is too much for an image. You need several of them, a chain of images.

Language designed to impress builds a gulf. Language to express builds a bridge.

Britain needs a simpler tax system which is simple to understand, where there are no loop-holes, where the very rich do not avoid tax by employing expensive accountants

Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.