Phraseology Quotes

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.

All the fun is in how you say a thing.

Do we seek delicate phraseology in politics or other forms of public life? We do not.

I like to start every sentence with: 'So here's the deal.'

Some of the workmen are shrewd Politicians whose sole object is to furnish the public with words instead of things; others, ordinary scribblers of abstractions, or even ignoramuses, and unable to distinguish words from things, imagine that they are framing laws by stringing together a lot of phrases

When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.

Apparently Sodapop Curtis said "gnarly," and Chris Traeger said "literally." Every decade I have a favorite phrase I can't stop with.

It even has the same phraseology as the English orders of knighthood, companions and this sort of thing.

Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!

My favorite phrase, that a friend of mine who worked on the Potter films and was a lot older than me would use in front of me, and I picked up from him many great phrases - the English have a lot of great idioms for sweating. I don't know why that is. But that's what we do. I feel like it's particularly our country; probably everywhere has a lot of idioms for sweating. He always said, "I'm sweating like a glassblower's asshole," which I always found an incredibly strange and yet vivid image.

I like to relish words and sentences, and phraseology, and there's not much facility for that [playing Maigret].

At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche.

I never knew what was meant by choice of words. It was one word or none.

I have this little thing that people call Keegan-ese, where I don't speak English words at all. I just say stuff like, "You gotta toish the doish and you gotta maloish the hoish."

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.

If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it's that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records, I don't hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal. I'd like the songs to be more storytelling, but also have the turns of phrase within them that would hopefully distance my writing from the pack. I feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.

Chris Matthews can't start any sentence without 'Let me ask you this... ' And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who's stopping you? Just say it!

I do like to turn a phrase, but it's all about how you turn it.

I don't want to say temporary, because temporary is such a trendy word.

I hate to say "found himself" - it sounds so ridiculous.

I know Irish-American people. I know what their homes look like. I know what they have for dinner. I know how they turn a phrase.