wORDS, wORDS, wORDS on WORDS...In The Beginning Was...

[Guest guest]

Words

 

I try not to speak more clearly than I think. -- Niels Bohr

 

The media is always accurate, except when they are talking about

things I know.

 

The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free

discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in

any one account. -- Walter Lippmann

 

Eloquence is logic on fire.

 

Television reporting and punditry are the tributes that entertainment

pays to the democratic ideal of discourse. -- Todd Gitlin, The Rise

of Anti-Intellectualism

 

Reading is like consciousness in that nothing happens. -- Stephen

Mitchelmore, E. M. Cioran: To Infinity and Beyond

 

However many holy words you read,

However many you speak,

What good will they do you

If you do not act upon them. -- Buddha

 

Talkers are no good doers. -- William Shakespeare, Henry VI

 

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as

hard to sleep after. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the

daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. -- Samuel

Johnson (1755), Preface to American Heritage Dictionary

 

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is

the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain

 

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody

drinks water. -- Mark Twain

 

Words must be weighed, not counted.

 

The pen, having written, moves on ... -- Santayana (?)

 

There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli. I know

some who are constantly drunk on books, as others are drunk on

whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and

stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. -

- H. L. Mencken

 

Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of

whatever depths they were once able to plumb. -- Stanley Kaufman

 

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words

into the smallest amount of thoughts. -- Winston Churchill

 

Omit needless words. -- William Strunk (1869-1946), The Elements of

Style

 

I have made this letter longer then usual because I lacked the time

to make it shorter. -- Blaise Pascal (?)

 

What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is

working when he's staring out the window.

 

This book is a mirror; if a monkey looks in, no sage peers out. --

Heidegger

 

A room without books is a body without a soul -- Cicero, 106-43 BC

 

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor

words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away

again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps

in them - and I hardly know any more when I look at it how I could

ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird. -- Friedrich

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 298

 

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of

a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according

to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. -- Oliver

Wendell Holmes, opinion, Towne v. Eisner, January 7, 1918

 

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid

excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide the

lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the

untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities

as " empty, " " meaningless, " or " dishonest, " and scorn to use them. No

matter how " pure " their motives, they thereby throw sand into

machinery that does not work too well at best. -- Robert A. Heinlein,

Notebooks of Lazarus

 

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden

chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up

and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you

can't hear yourself speak. -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste

Books, trans. R. J. Hollingdale

 

Ambiguity: Telling the truth when you don't mean to.

 

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can

no longer believe you. -- Nietzsche (?)

 

Forget the lowlife, tourist, squeaky clean middle-class bad boys who

call their sex-depravity in blunt prose, fine writing. Forget the

copycat girls who wouldnt know the end of a dildo from a vacuum rod.

They are only chintz dipped in mud and we are after real material.

What is forbidden is scarier, sexier, unnightmared by the white-

collar cataloguers of crap. 'Don't do that' makes for easy revolt.

What is forbidden is hidden. To worm into the heart and mind until

what one truly desires has been encased in dark walls of what one

ought to desire, is the success of the serpent. -- Jeanette

Winterson, Art Objects (?)

 

I think, therefore I am -- Rene Descartes

 

I don't think so. -- Descartes' last words, as he suddenly vanished

 

The phrase " we (I) (you) simply must-- " designates something that

need not be done. " That goes without saying " is a red warning. " Of

course " means you had best check it yourself. These small-change

cliches and others like them, when read correctly, are reliable

channel markers. -- Robert A. Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus

 

Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is

inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.

 

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with

great force. -- Dorothy Parker

 

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to

make sense. -- Tom Clancy (?)

 

Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross

references.

 

Mirable Dictu [it is marvelous to relate]

 

Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which

we throw around ourselves. -- Swami Vivekananda

 

" But Charlotte, " said Wilbur, " I'm not terrific. "

" That doesn't make a particle of difference, " replied

Charlotte. " ...People believe almost anything they see in print. " --

E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

 

Without publicity a terrible thing happens: nothing. -- P.T. Barnum

 

Has sensational journalism gone too far? Find out at eleven! -- John

Stewart, The Daily Show

 

Reporters come in as newspaper men, trained to get the news and eager

to get it; they end as tinhorn statesmen, full of dark secrets and

unable to write the truth if they tried. -- H.L. Mencken

 

Literature -- even bad, honest literature -- changes you once you've

experienced it well and fully. It makes you restive and always

slightly hungry. It makes you feel not bigger, but incalculably

smaller, because you're forced to realize that there are entire

worlds -- locked up in distorted bits and fragments -- in more books

than you'll ever have time to open. -- Gavin McNett, Reaching to the

Converted

 

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor

words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away

again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps

in them - and I hardly know any more when I look at it how I could

ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird. -- Nietzsche

 

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant,

and what ought to be done remains undone. -- Confucius

 

When there is something to be said, it is better if it is said right

away. If it is said later, it will sound like an excuse. -- Yamamoto

Tsunetomo, The Book of the Samurai

 

Note to self: Use fewer notes.

 

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: " Of course it is

none of my business but-- " is to place a period after the word " but. "

Don't use excessive force in supplying such moron with a period.

Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get

you talked about. -- Robert A. Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus

 

A squeegee by any other name wouldn't sound as funny.

 

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke in French; I never did

succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. -- Mark

Twain

 

 

 

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A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter " c " would be dropped to be

replased either by " k " or " s " , and likewise " x " would no longer be

part of the alphabet. The only kase in which " c " would be retained

would be the " ch " formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2

might reform " w " spelling, so that " which " and " one " would take the

same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish " y " replasing it

with " i " and Iear 4 might fiks the " g/j " anomali wonse and for all.

 

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with

Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or

so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi

ridandant letez " c " , " y " and " x " - bai now jast a memori in the

maindz ov ould doderez - tu riplais " ch " , " sh " , and " th " rispektivli.

 

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a

lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. --

Mark Twain A classic is something that everyone wants to have read

and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain, The Disappearance of

Literature

 

Users don't read

Users only scan

Users haven't got

No attention span

-- Dean Allen, Textism

 

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that

they need no answer. -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

 

There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the

other is to read Pope. -- Oscar Wilde

 

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to

speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow

 

Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office

automation?

 

If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get rich, or

famous or both.

 

Rarely do people communicate; they just take turns talking.

 

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

 

 

25,000

Average number of words in the written vocabulary of a 6 to 14 year-

old American child in 1945 -- H. D. Rinsland, A Basic Vocabulary of

Elementary School Children, Macmillan (N.Y.C.)

10,000

Average number today -- Prof. Gary Ingersoll, University of Indiana

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's

read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to

themselves. -- Don Marquis

Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will

go into his office and say to his secretary, 'Is there a play from

Shaw this morning? and when she says 'No,' he will say, 'Well, then

we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy. -

- G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home

 

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a

novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. -- Fred Allen

 

Words that emanate from the heart enter into the heart of another. --

Midrash

 

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

 

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known

quotations. -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

 

'I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my

main purpose is not to receive messages. -- Umberto Eco, quoted in

the New Yorker

 

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat

different world. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for

the benefit of his country. -- Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639

 

Jargon systematically twists language in order to subvert rational

thought and reduce political discourse to the making and breaking of

mental associations among vaguely defined symbols, often by means of

extreme emotional manipulation -- thus the shouting. In the process,

political discourse is reduced to the most primitive psychological

level, and the toxic rhetoric that results can be best understood

using psychological ideas such as projection. -- Phil Agre,

Understanding Jargon

 

If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak. -- Phil Wayne

 

Arguing with ______ is liking wrestling with a pig in mud, after a

while you realize the pig is enjoying it!

 

double-think, n: acceptance of opposing beliefs; holding two opposing

beliefs at the same time -- coined by George Orwell, 1984 (see also:

cognitive dissonance, theory; sunshower)

 

Society is shaped more by the media that transmit information than by

the information itself. -- old cultural theory

 

The medium is the message -- Marshall McLuhan

 

The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man

does with it, not what he says about it. -- Percy W. Bridgman

 

Can you understand that which you cannot name?

 

State the problem in words as clearly as possible.

 

In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth

of the matter about which he is to speak?-- Plato (?)

 

Wisdom has two parts:

1) having a lot to say, and

2) not saying it.

 

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of

literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in

fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating

himself. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

Because if you don't know why you are doing it [surfing web pages],

you are going to be pushed around by the most exciting words in a

never ending sea of information. -- Ted Selker, BBC article

 

Plagiarists have, at least, the merit of preservation. -- Benjamin

Disraeli

 

When it became clear in my organism that writing was the most

productive direction of my being, everything in me turned in that

direction and left all abilities empty that involved the joys of sex,

of eating, of drinking, of philosophical thought, and, first of all,

of music. I starved in all these directions . . . . I didn't find

this purpose [i.e. of writing] consciously, it found itself . . . . --

Franz Kafka, diary entry of January 3, 1912

 

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own

thinking. -- Christopher Morley

 

Any book that has been banned is probably worth reading.

 

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put

first. -- Blaise Pascal

 

a bit too wordy for me.......bob