Colloquialisms Quotes & Sayings

There are a lot of colloquialisms in the Cantonese language that can never be represented aptly in Mandarin. — Jia Zhangke

A comfortable rut and a grave are very much alike. The only real difference is the dimensions. — Ralph Compton

Women have participated in almost every fight for freedom. They were there when civilians were targeted they were there when the bombs were planted. To argue they didn't have enough power to speak up or they had been brainwashed by their male colleagues is to try to disassociate from the darkness that resides in everyone. And to disassociate from your darkness is to lose your power over it. — Jessa Crispin

I knew when I went to a very hippie high school that focused on music that I wanted to do something in the industry. — Tove Lo

Learn Languages the Right Way. Language acquisition games and abstract communicative method are bullshit. The second-best way to learn a foreign language is alone in a room doing skull-numbing rote memorization of vocabulary, grammar, key phrases, and colloquialisms. The best way is in bed. — Chuck Thompson

Time. So much of our human experience is bound up in time, I muse. It reflects in our everyday colloquialisms, and drives so much of our activities. Yet this obsession with the passing of the hours is a relatively modern phenomenon; an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution, and its fixation on efficiency. A new master exported by England across the globe, so that in the developed world at least everyone has one wrist on which is clamped the new and unforgiving shackle we call a watch. In less pressurised days, men observed the ageing of the universe through the more sedate changing of the seasons. But no more. Now the hour is king, or the minute and sometimes even the second. We are all people in a rush, where speed is of the essence, and slow is often deployed as a term of abuse. — John Dolan

I could peel you like a pear and god himself would see the justice in it. — Katharine Hepburn

Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life. — Yitzhak Rabin

Broadsheets can be scathing. But I have respect for broadsheet journalists because they haven't succumbed to degrading themselves, to writing pidgin English with all these terrible colloquialisms, the phrasing of which is just, like, embarrassing. — Peaches Geldof

We have never considered our brand superior or inferior to any other one, and we have never spoken about our work in comparison to anyone else's. We are ourselves; we have never had the presumption to please everyone, but we believe in the utmost liberty to express oneself. — Domenico Dolce

Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees. — Zora Neale Hurston

For a long period of time, the media covered rap music and hip hop the same way they cover a lot of black people, people of color, you know, the bad news happens to be news. They used to have these little stupid colloquialisms that pop up like, "You know what? No news is bad news!" They trick the masses into thinking that any news is great for you. And I just think that's a piece of crap. — Chuck D

Another segment of society that has constructed a language of its own is business. People in business say that toner cartridges are in short supply, that they have updated the next shipment of these cartridges, and that they will finalize their recommendations at the next meeting of the board. They are speaking a language familiar and dear to them. Its portentous nouns and verbs invest ordinary events with high adventure; executives walk among toner cartridges, caparisoned like knights. We should tolerate them
every person of spirit wants to ride a white horse. — William Strunk Jr.

English has a better way with colloquialisms. It has colloquialisms that are colorful and expressive but not too heavy or distracting. In German, if you use colloquialisms, it quickly descends into some kind of dialect literature. — Daniel Kehlmann

Read me back the last line." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal who could take shorthand. "Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal. "That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger. "Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a moment ago." "Oh, my God! — Joseph Heller

You know I have trouble with colloquialisms, so I resent your shocked reaction. — Jessica Park

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music. — Sonny Rollins

We know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each others honesty — Thucydides

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s. — Beck

Cuteness in code often appears in the form of colloquialisms or slang. For example, don't use the name whack() to mean kill(). Don't tell little culture-dependent jokes like eatMyShorts() to mean abort().
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. — Robert C. Martin

I do notice that my songs fit all over the map, even in terms of the colloquialisms in them. The songs come out with their references intact, almost unheeded by me. It's like they existed somehow before they met me with their relationship to the tradition, and then they just end up coming through me at that moment because of my relationship to some certain kind of music that I've listened to in my life. I know that sounds a little bit woooey. — Mirah

I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary. — Lydia Davis