Fancy Word For Quotes & Sayings

Literature works from mind to mind and is more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination. Should the story say 'he ate bread', the dramatic producer or painter can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says 'he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below', the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man's consciousness. Now, I'll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it's more than that because with remembering, it's not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That's what cinema does. — Philip Kerr

The creator wrestles with a hard, invisible substance, a substance far superior to him. Even the greatest victor emerges vanquished, because our deepest secret, the only one that deserves expression, always remains unexpressed. This secret never submits to art's material contours. We suffocate inside every word. Seeing a blossoming tree, a hero, a woman, the morning star, we cry, Ah! Nothing else is able to accommodate our joy. When, analyzing this Ah! we wish to turn it into thought and art in order to impart it to mankind and rescue it from our own dissolution, how it cheapens into brazen, mascaraed words full of air and fancy! — Nikos Kazantzakis

Whatever had made the Dean take such a fancy to him, a cowardly, selfish, obstinate, ugly old fellow like him? He would never understand it. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at that too. Faith in God. God. A word he had always refused. But the Dean had said, put the word love in its place. — Elizabeth Goudge

Marriage is just a fancy word for adopting an overgrown male child who can not be handled by his parents any more. — Thabang Gideon Magaola

It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed lika an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!'
They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears across the years
They twist my 'eart-strings yet! — George Orwell

[The imagination] ... inspires an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and ... a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit. — Marsilio Ficino

I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own? — Alan Alda

Chivalry is not just a fancy word with a neat meaning; it's a way of life. — Vaughn Ripley

'God' is a relative word and has a respect to servants, and 'Deity' is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. — Isaac Newton

Truth or Dare?" she asks. I hesitate. "Truth," I say finally. "I can imagine one of your dares, and I don't fancy running down Oxford Street naked tonight."
"Truth," Alice says slowly, drawing out the vowel sound as if she's savouring the word. "Are you sure? Are you sure you can be completely honest?"
"I think so. Try me."
"Okay" And then she looks at me curiously. "So. Were you glad, deep down? Were you glad to be rid of her? Your perfect sister? Were you secretly glad when she died?"
Katherine has moved away from her shattered family to start afresh in Sydney. There she keeps her head down until she is befriended by the charismatic, party-loving Alice, who brings her out of her shell. But there is a dark side to Alice, something seductive yet threatening. And as Katherine learns the truth about Alice, their tangled destinies spiral to an explosive and devastating finale. — Rebecca James

I'm fond of her."
Oh yeah? Fond are you? I've heard of fond. I expect old erection here" - she pointed to the tube of DNA - "was fond of his victim. Fond is a prude's word, Ben. You fancy her. That's what you say. You fancy Miss Library something painful. And who knows?" She grinned, gap-toothed, like the Wife of Bath. "Maybe she fancies you. — Simon Mawer

...fairy tales, just a fancy word for lies... — Cecelia Ahern

The image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it's not true - French food isn't just rich. The word "healthy" doesn't exist in French. We have many, many words, but not that one. To me, healthy means paying close attention to feeding people. — Alain Ducasse

Love!" She threw the pillow aside and sat up, pulling the be clothes around her. "You hypocrite. 'Tis nothing to you to say that, is it? You prate about love and roses and devotion, but you don't know the meaning of the word. You never have, and I doubt you ever will."
He let out a harsh breath. "I don't understand you. How you can say that, after - " He spread his hands and made a baffled sound. "After this."
"This! This is fancy, 'tis infatuation, 'tis a dream. Maybe you love your horses, maybe you love Nemo - all you require of me is a reflection of yourself. You and your bloody mask!" She was crying openly now, her head tilted back, her eyes shut against the tears. "Don't keep trying to dress it up as love, because I know what love is, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. — Laura Kinsale

Observations," he says.
"Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes." They'd been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery.
He gives me a sidewise look. "Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word. — Karen Marie Moning

I burned out my drawing hand by using it too much. The common word for it is writer's cramp. The fancy words for it are focal dystonia. The symptom in my case was a pinky finger that went spastic when I tried to draw. — Scott Adams

You hold in your hands a very special book. It contains one hundred carnival rides of terror. You must remember: horror can come from any direction. It can be as subtle as a spider web's caress, or as vicious as the drop of an axe blade. It can be grim as the reaper, or as sardonic as, well, Sardonicous. It can wear the garments of science or superstition; can be dressed in the trappings of fantasy or the fancy-free. But always it will terrify. And one of the bluntest of its instruments is the short-short story, one of the most difficult of literary devices to master. Not only must each word be perfect-but each comma and period. Nothing can be wasted. In the hands of master executioners, like the authors who fill this book-it can be deadly. So... Die-and die again- one hundred times... — Martin H. Greenberg

What bothers me is that health professionals give fancy names to conditions or learning difficulties that will irritate the patients; like OCD not being in alphabetical order, putting an 'S' in 'lisp,' and making dyslexia a word that no one can spell. It's just mean. — Suzanne Wright

I want to block some common misunderstandings about 'understanding': In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word 'understanding.' — John Searle

Author' is just a fancy word for Schizophrenic people with good writing skills and cash. — Testy McTesterson

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. — Steven Pinker

When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to act, we cannot bear a provoking word. — Hannah More

Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French took over Madagascar at the end of the last century (colonised is probably too kind a word for moving in on a country that was doing perfectly well for itself but which the French simply took a fancy to), they were impatient with the curious Malagasy habit of not bothering to pronounce the first and last syllables of place names. They decided, in their rational Gallic way, that if that was how the names were pronounced then they could damn well be spelt that way too. It would be rather as if someone had taken over England and told us that from now on we would be spelling Leicester 'Lester' and liking it. We might be forced to spell it that way, but we wouldn't like it, and neither did the Malagasy. As soon as they managed to divest themselves of French rule, in 1960, they promptly reinstated all the old spellings and just kept the cooking and the bureaucracy. — Douglas Adams

When you get called the n-word, as a black person you can do anything. It's like getting a gold star in Super Mario Brothers and junk. I hear the music when I hear the n-word. I get right into it; I get really into it. You can do anything. You could be in a fancy restaurant - just start throwing poop at the walls. People be like, 'What are you doing?' 'Someone called him the n-word. — Donald Glover

A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing. — Bryan A. Garner

I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern. — Jodie Foster

Tolerance is just a fancy word for ignoring a fascist ideology. Acceptance is the only way. — Jessica Jung

I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im. — John Steinbeck

An older dom snorted. "Atherton uses the word escort loosely. The last time someone messed with a trainee, he threw the guy across the bar. Strolled over, waited for the idiot to stand up, punched his lights out, and dragged him by his jacket collar out of the place. Escorted him, my ass. Didn't even wrinkle that fancy suit." He took a sip of his beer and added, "Atherton is invariably polite, but nobody in their right mind fucks with his trainees. — Cherise Sinclair

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war. — Golda Meir

... how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us.
And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of one only word, goodbye. This, really, would be wonderful. It would be sweet, life, every life. And things wouldn't hurt, but they would get near taken by stream, one could first shave and then touch them and only finally be touched. Be wounded, also. Die because of them. Doesn't matter. But everything would be, finally, human. It would be enough someone's fancy -a father, a lover, someone- could invent a way, here in the middle of the silence, in this land which don't wanna talk. Clement way, and beautiful.
A way from here to the sea. — Alessandro Baricco

I have a passion for words. I love words. And I'm just learning and developing my skills for words. I do books and I do journalism and plays. I have a broad palette. I don't have a great eye for direction. I love working with actors and I work very well with them because I appreciate what they bring to the table. I'd never say never, of course, but I look at it and don't really fancy it. I want to try and master the word side of it first. — Geoff Thompson

Etiquette-a fancy word for simple kindness. — Elsa Maxwell

Former president George W. Bush released his new memoir. By the way, 'memoir' is just a fancy word for 'a bunch of stuff that happened to me. — Craig Ferguson

You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave? — Emily Bronte

But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; - that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power. — Plato

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even — Kate Elliott

Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom. — Michael Pollan

Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday. — David Ogilvy

What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule? Inverted vanity? What matters names, if it has brought me to this? I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour, forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same thing in my marriage," he added more hoarsely. "I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!"
"Ay, we have the same blood," moralised Gotthold. "You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic."
"Sceptic? - coward!" cried Otto. "Coward is the word. A springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward! — Robert Louis Stevenson

I won't even try to pretend to know what bugs think about during sex, but right about the time the male praying mantis is probably thinking that he's quite the stud, the female does something pretty surprising. Yes, even for horny, bat-shit-crazy, homicidal copulating bugs. Once she has had enough of copulating, she moves on to the next phase, which is masticating. No, not masturbating ... masticating. This is a fancy-schmancy word for chewing. She chews his head off. And no, I don't mean like, "Why didn't you bring me flowers and chocolate?" Oh, no. She literally bites his head off ... and here's where it gets really interesting: She eats it. — Michael Makai

Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word, they raise the value of the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy; I say, raise the value of it at their own expense; give vast presents for a ruinous favour, which is so far from being equal to the price that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction. — Daniel Defoe

A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing also. — Ludwig Feuerbach

Before you use a fancy word, make room for it. — Joseph Joubert

Craftsmanship, his Uncle Cornelius had once told him, was just a fancy word for what happened when labor met love. — Dennis Lehane

Leisure: A fancy word for people who don't want to admit they're bored. — Gene Perret

So, you play Batman at night, and fix-it man during the day?" His nose wrinkled in a way that was entirely too adorable for his tough guy demeanor. She didn't say a word about it though, knowing he'd never do it again if she pointed it out.

"Batman? Batman's a pathetic jelly donut. He's a little Richie Rich that prances 'round in fancy tights and dress up panties, too much of a wuss to do anythin' without a mask and a prepubescent scarecrow as a sidekick. — Amy Cook

Yes, word had gotten around about my amusing little defeathering trick (note: made the chicken naked). Apparently we couldn't just eat the poor thing and be done with it. Apparently we had to knit cunning lil' sweaters for it so it could squawk around the yard, feeling fancy. — Cate Tiernan

And strategy is just a fancy word for a special kind of common sense, the ability to see options, to make them where there were none. It's not about knowing the rules. It's about knowing how to break them. — V.E Schwab

Some folks, he said, seem to want to seek out the things that destroy them. Called an achimist, a fancy word, but a true one. — Matt Bondurant

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. The potion is the sum of one's whole existence. Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and color in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.
The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.
No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.
But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom ... — Anais Nin