Vocabulary Quotes

The word is only a representation of the meaning, even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King is a powerful guy, will powerful vocabulary.

~ Deyth Banger

Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Here's my using dickwad in a sentence. Greg is such a dickwad, he locks his car in the Pagoda Pizza parking lot. (No. That isn't a real Vocab word.)

~ A.s. King

There was a language specific to all things. The ability to learn another language in one arena, whether it was music, medicine, or finance, could be used to accelerate learning and other arenas, too.

~ Chris Gardner

As vocabulary is reduced , so are the number of feelings you can express, the number of events you can describe, the number of the things you can identify! Not only understanding is limited, but also experience. Man grows by language. Whenever he limits language he retrogresses!

~ Sheri S. Tepper

Metaphor isn't just decorative language. If it were, it wouldn't scare us so much. . . . Colorful language threatens some people, who associate it, I think, with a kind of eroticism (playing with language in public = playing with yourself), and with extra expense (having to sense or feel more). I don't share that opinion. Why reduce life to a monotone? Is that truer to the experience of being alive? I don't think so. It robs us of life's many textures. Language provides an abundance of words to keep us company on our travels. But we're losing words at a reckless pace, the national vocabulary is shrinking. Most Americans use only several hundred words or so. Frugality has its place, but not in the larder of language. We rely on words to help us detail how we feel, what we once felt, what we can feel. When the blood drains out of language, one's experience of life weakens and grows pale. It's not simply a dumbing down, but a numbing.

~ Diane Ackerman

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt. Some say that the main cause of this very serious difficulty lies in the fact that human beings are basically made of clay, which, as the encyclopedias helpfully explain, is a detrital sedimentary rock made up of tiny mineral fragments measuring one two hundred and fifty-sixths of a millimeter. Until now, despite long linguistic study, no one has managed to come up with a name for this.

~ José Saramago

We live at the level of our language.

~ Ellen Gilchrist

The powerful intellect leashed by an impoverished vocabulary is a myth. Without a vocabulary, a language, the intellect cannot develop.

~ T. Geronimo Johnson

Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100 words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4000 words account for 98% of conversation.

~ David Miller

[T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis.

~ Joseph Brodsky

Cussing doesn’t come from a lack of vocabulary – I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does.

~ Anis Mojgani

Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.

~ Harold Holzer

There are two words that I believe could be completely eradicated from our vocabulary – “I can’t.” These two words are so definite that they leave absolutely no room for hope. Instead, I suggest we use the phrase, “How can I?

~ Daniel Willey

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter Nike and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

PLEASE and THANK YOU...two polite phrases which are slowly disappearing from our vocabulary.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

All conversation, big or small, is about painting word pictures of your experiences for other people. The more

~ Nicholas Boothman

So much of what we read and write these days is disposable.

~ John Kasich

When Internet parlance finds its way into our accepted vocabulary, it becomes a cliché.

~ Paul Babicki

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

~ Ron Suskind

Right!Right!You can get there!I can get there!You're a natural at counting to two!I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!If you can count to two, you can count to anything!If I can count to two, I can count to anything!And then the world is your mollusc!My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

~ Terry Pratchett

Sacrifice is a noun in my vocabulary that should be a verb in my life.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like encyclopedia and rhododendron.

~ A.a. Milne

In God’s vocabulary, ‘lost’ is an unnecessary adjective that is easily erased by the adjective ‘found’ if we would simply be brave enough to hand Him the eraser.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If I had been born in the 1700′s, presumably children had a bigger vocabulary than I had which means I wouldn’t have been able to recite fairy tales to kids because I’m not smart enough.You know…?I’d have to be like…..uh:In time passed, though not long ago, there lived three pigs in stature, little in number, three, who being of an age both entitled and inspired to seek their fortune did set about to do thusly.When they had traveled a distance, pig numbered first spake saying, “Harken Brethren, head this impetuous realm! Tarry me far from hearth and home I fear we shall fair *snort* not well!” And so being collectively agreed, but individually impaled, the diminutive swine sought each to erect himself an abode.....

~ John Branyan

Norman Mailer enhances the beauty of pugilism by elegantly exploring it.

~ Davis Miller

This year my goal will be to learn new vocabulary in English and to read as much as possible books.

~ Deyth Banger

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.

~ Gail Carriger

We’re sick of hearing people say, “That band is so gay,” or “Those guys are fags.” Gay is not a synonym for shitty. If you wanna say something’s shitty, say it’s shitty. Stop being such homophobic assholes.

~ Pete Wentz

Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.

~ Neal Shusterman

Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.

~ Mark Twain

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

~ John Mcwhorter

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

~ Pierre Schaeffer

Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.

~ Bjarke Ingels