Four Letter Quotes & Sayings

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. — Dick Cavett

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information. — Umberto Eco

We have a lot of kids who don't know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word. — Hillary Clinton

You say love is just a four letter word. — Bob Dylan

It's a four-letter word for a part of the human anatomy but it's not m-i-n-d. — Joseph Hansen

To make money you have to use a four letter word: SELL. — Richie Norton

Any woman who can't say a four-letter word sometimes is deceitful. — Fanny Brice

It's not real. Love is a product of habit and routine. If you break that habit and change those routines, the person you've loved and lost and can't live without suddenly becomes an easy memory to file in the back of your mind . In other words, love isn't a heart condition. It's not even an emotional one. It's just a four-letter word we use when we want to control someone else and ruin their life if we ever decide to walk out on them — Morgan Parker

All my friends and peers keep asking me when I'm going to rest - I just tell them it's another dirty four-letter word! — Dionne Warwick

Survival is a four letter word. — Alexis De Veaux

The lesser of the evils now before us is to abandon all moral censorship. We have either sunk beneath or risen above it. If we do, there will be reams of filth. But we need not read it. Nor, probably, will the fashion last for ever. Four-letter words may soon be as dated as antimacassars. — C.S. Lewis

I am in no doubt that if you use the term 'luv' in a letter or text message then you are incapable of truly understanding the emotion. Artists have not pored over heartache and unrequited sentimentality for years so that our generation could decide that four letters is simply one too many to express how we feel. — Jon Richardson

Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you. — Neil Gaiman

Today's comics use four-letter words as a shortcut to thinking. They're shooting for that big laugh and it becomes a panic thing, using four-letter words to shock people. — Red Skelton

My mother won't tolerate any four-letter words. — Dixie Carter

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers that be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year I see him still, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. — Carol Ann Duffy

If a four-letter man marries a five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their children be? — Ernest Hemingway,

I folded the letter and carefully placed it back in its spot. Now I had to wait twenty-four hours for a response. This was so much less gratifying than texting. — Kasie West

Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, "which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!" The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. "It never stops and it's certainly no holiday package tour!" How true. I'd seen that for myself in Washington.
I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, "An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!" This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good. — Mary Robertson

We are beginning to shift into life code. And in the process of shifting into life code, every life form on this planet is coded in a double helix with a sugar phosphate backbone. And that codes whether you become a bacteria, an orange, a lemon, a Lemur, a Cow, a sheep, a human being, a politician, any one of these things is all coded in this four-letter code. — Juan Enriquez

It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word. — Tom Cruise

He speaks four letter language because his mind is small. His voice is like venom, I don't like him at all. — Rodney Crowell

There are four-letter words you should never use in business. They're not fuck or shit. They're need, must, can't, easy, just, only and fast. These words gets in the way of healthy communication — Jason Fried

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written. — Anthony Trollope

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's. — Francis Crick

Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave away $365 million, learned early in life that the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. He attended school only four years; yet he learned how to handle people. To illustrate: His sister-in-law was worried sick over her two boys. They were at Yale, and they were so busy with their own affairs that they neglected to write home and paid no attention whatever to their mother's frantic letters. Then Carnegie offered to wager a hundred dollars that he could get an answer by return mail, without even asking for it. Someone called his bet; so he wrote his nephews a chatty letter, mentioning casually in a postscript that he was sending each one a five-dollar bill. He neglected, however, to enclose the money. Back came replies by return mail thanking "Dear Uncle Andrew" for his kind note and - you can finish the sentence yourself. — Dale Carnegie

BOOK, a four-letter word for truth serum" -Kevin 'Freak' from Freak's Dictionary
"Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick pg 161 — Rodman Philbrick

Now she said, "I'm up to the four-letter words." And I said, "You mean the dirty ones, like shit?" And she laughed and said, "Worse ones than that." And I said, "You mean the c-word and the f-word?" and she said, "No. Like love. — Margaret Atwood

I can see that an insufficent, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four-letter words add power to languauge — Douglas Preston

If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology. — Noam Chomsky

P.P.P.S. Twenty-four hours later. I have reread this letter and I can see where somebody might get the impression that I don't do anything but sit around and remember sad things and pity myself. Actually, I am a very lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that. — Kurt Vonnegut

Inevitably, the flood of literary pornography loosed on us is dulling our reactions of surprise or shock. Its writers are forced to raise the ante, to provide stronger and stronger stimulants. Or try to provide them, since both the manner, the naming of parts and the few inexpressive four-letter words, and the matter, are narrowly limited. — Storm Jameson

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States memorably stated in a letter in 1807: 'nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle...Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the first, Truths; second, Probabilities; the third, Possibilities; the fourth, Lies. The first chapter would be very short.' If that was true as far back as 1807 when the technologies supporting the mass media were markedly less advanced - how much more true it is today. The — Jason Carter

Risk is a four-letter word, but you know something? So is safe. — Chiara Kelly

Change is not a four letter word ... but often your reaction to it is! — Jeffrey Gitomer

There are only two four letter words that are offense to men. The words don't and stop. Well, unless they are used together. — Christine Zolendz

The very opposite of freedom is cliche, and nothing is less free, more inert with convention and hollow brutality, than a row of four-letter words. — George Steiner

Fate! This four-letter little word gave the biggest harm to mankind! We must totally get rid of this degrading concept of primitiveness! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

( ... ) rest content and satisfied that as you are caught in the noose of love it is one of worth and merit that has taken you, and one that has not only the the four S's that they say true lovers ought to have, but a complete alphabet; only listen to me and you will see how I can repeat it by rote. He is to my eyes and thinking, Amiable, Brave, Courteous, Distinguished, Elegant, Fond, Gay, Honorable, Illustrious, Loyal, Manly, Noble, Open, Polite, Quickwitted, Rich, and the S's according to the saying, and then Tender, Veracious: X does not suite him, for it is a rough letter; Y has been given already; and Z Zealous for your honour. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Love is never just a four letter word. — Colin Tegerdine

There is one story about letters. A perpetually cheerful Frog pays a visit to Toad but finds Toad glum, sitting on his front porch.
"This is my sad time of day," says Toad, "when I wait for the mail to come."
"Why is that?" says Frog.
"No one has ever sent me a letter. My mailbox is always empty. That is why waiting for the mail is a sad time for me."
Then Frog and Toad sit "on the porch, feeling sad together."
Frog rescues the situation by running home, writing a letter to Toad, and sending it literally by snail mail. The little snail brings it four days later.
Even though Toad saw Frog every day, he longed for the strangeness, the otherness of a letter, for something to come from out there and address him, "Dear Toad." Is that the thrill I feel finding a letter from you in my box? The address of a friend is made into a physical fact and every letter an artifact of the otherwise invisible communion of friendship. — Amy Andrews

Hope is the most important four-letter word in the language. — Ed Markey

If I was dealing with a trader, every other word had to be a four-letter word. — Muriel Siebert

Less fear; more hope: just four little four-letter words, but when they are vividly felt as emotion, they are behavior changing, life changing, world-changing. — Louis Tice

You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words. — Pablo Picasso

I spent four minutes yesterday looking for the halfway point between where I am & where I want to be. I found the city - you just have to tell me if you want pizza, coffee or strange street meat. Just four minutes searching, but all day (really all week), I've been thinking of this letter & you. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Life is just a dirty four-letter word: W-O-R-K. — J. P. McEvoy

Bored is a four-letter word. — Jill M. Singleton

Debt is a four letter word and means a four word sentence - Be Prepared for Trouble. — Lucas Remmerswaal

And if I say to you that I am glad of everything we have done together, and sorry that we will not be here together in forty years, laughing at a faded photo of you impersonating a lion, it having withered well, you less so, as we stand fabulously old, in a city that understands what spirit it takes to be old, to be beautiful, to be much looked at, to be itself, to be never quite caught, to have a past, to be content, to have seen much, to have remained, to have continued ... — Jeanette Winterson

Hope was supposed to be a good thing, but it was starting to feel like every other four-letter word you're not supposed to say. — Elizabeth Scott

It's hard to find a girl with a heart of gold, when you're living in a four letter world. — Warren Zevon

A single word that can be offensive to someone is a horrible thing for anyone who has iman. In other words, filthy language out of your mouth and faith inside your heart cannot coexist. You cannot have iman in your heart and ugly words come out of your mouth. If you have no control over whatever four letter words you keep using every time you get frustrated, there's a spiritual problem, it's not just a habit problem.
How can you use a terrible word for anyone who has iman? — Nouman Ali Khan

That was the only thing that had got him through the four years of blood and madness: Know exactly where your gun is when you doze for ten minutes in your dugout; always check your gas mask; see that your men have understood their orders to the letter. You don't think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation p. 33 — M.L. Stedman

And it's beyond my energy to explain why I don't think that four-letter word that everyone's so obsessed over and that gets everyone into so much trouble and pretty much makes everyone behave like an ass can live in a place like this. Somewhere during dry cleaning, details, and missed meals, it flakes away and what you're left with is married people with a tolerable affinity for each other. That little four-letter word can exist only in poetry, or movies of 2 to 3 hours in length. Maybe in a mini-series.
This place of dull details and irksome obligations is a home only to other four-letter words, which are used much more frequently. — Kendare Blake

I won't go to movies with permissiveness, four-letter words, or violence. Show me 'E.T.' and 'Chariots of Fire' instead. That's entertainment, not exploitation of the human body. — Ginger Rogers

Did that hurt? On your lip?"
"Not too much. I said a few choice four-letter words, though. — Tammara Webber

I am sure that no one coming to this ceremony expected a High Court judge to use the occasion to talk about that four-letter word, love. But that's a good thing. In life, never be predictable. It's so uncool. — Michael Kirby

It took me a good thirty minutes to find Cal. That was actually a good thing, because it gave me plenty of time to come up with something to say to him that wasn't just a string of four-letter words.
There are a lot of freaky things witches and warlocks do, obviously, but the arranged marriage thing was one of the grossest. When a witch is thirteen, her parents hook her up with an available warlock, based on things like compatible powers and family alliances. The entire thing is so eighteenth century.
As I stomped across school grounds, all I could see was Cal sitting with my dad in some manly room with leather chairs and dead animals on the wall, chomping on cigars as Dad formally signed me away to him.They probably even high-fived.
Okay,so it's not like either of them are exactly the cigar-and-high-fives type, but still. — Rachel Hawkins

Love is many things. It's every raw human emotion rolled up into one messy four letter word. There's no rule book and definitely no guarantees. — J.L. Berg

Despite appearances, Sym, Love is not a four-letter word. — Geraldine McCaughrean

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. — Brian Joyce

Who isn't crazy sometimes? Who hasn't driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn't haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn't toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence email, watched the phone praying it will ring; who doesn't lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else? — Jess Walter

After working with many nutritionists, reading books, and practicing trial and error on my own body, I have finally found a way to control my weight without deprivation. I call my program 'Somersizing,' and Somersizing is not a diet. Diet is a nasty four-letter word that conjures up negative thoughts of sacrifice and obsession and guilt. — Suzanne Somers

Why use a 10 letter word you can barely pronounce ... when a four letter one will do. — Timothy Pina

The only problem with him and Henry was they were like Charlie Brown and Lucy. The only difference was once in a while Henry would hold onto the football so Eddie could kick it
not often, but once in a while. Eddie had even thought, when in one of his heroin dazes, that he ought to write Charles Schultz a letter. Dear Mr. Schultz, he would say. You're missing a bet by ALWAYS having Lucy pull the football up at the last second. She ought to hold it down there once in a while. Nothing Charlie Brown could ever predict, you understand.
Sometimes she'd maybe hold it down for him to kick three, even four times in a row, then nothing for a month, then once, and then nothing for three or four days, and then, you know, you get the idea. That would REALLY fuck the kid up, you know? — Stephen King

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing- persons reports, then moved on themselves. — Joan Didion

One who has not only the four S's, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example ... Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I'll supervise, shall I?" offered Cogsworth. "To me, 'dust' is a four-letter word."
"'Dust' is a four-letter word to everyone," said Lumiere.
"'Work' is also a four-letter word," said Plumette, under her breath. "Perhaps that is why monsieur strives to avoid it — Jennifer Donnelly

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word. — Dorothy Parker

LIFE is four letters so is FCUK, LOVE is four letter so is PAIN. — Santosh Kalwar

There are Four of Us

I have turned aside from everything,
from the whole earthly store.
The spirit and guardian of this place
is an old tree-stump in water.

We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
and life is a habit we put on.
On paths of air I seem to overhear
two friendly voices, talking in turn.

Did I say two?...There
by the east wall's tangle of raspberry,
is a branch of elder, dark and fresh.
Why! It's a letter from Marina.


November 1962 (in delirium) — Anna Akhmatova

Work is a four-letter word that ends with "K. — Donald Allen Kirch

This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years ... [Footnote: Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie.] ... I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed. — Mark Twain

Fear comes in many forms, and we usually don't call it by its four-letter name. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial. Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization. — Anonymous

When he went to college he wrote me letters which I answered within four days. Each letter took at least five drafts before I thought it suitable to send to Cambridge. — Laurie Colwin

I can't say what my first thought was as I sunk below the surface, because it was mostly a string of four-letter words. — Rachel Hawkins

Fear is only a four letter word. — Jeff Hardy

About four or five weeks after it was publicly announced I was no longer breastfeeding, I got a letter from the NHS saying they were being supportive of me, but basically, they were very disappointed I'd stopped. — Denise Van Outen

Four-letter words have always offended me. I cringe at hearing them. Can't, don't, and won't are the worst. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Love is the most powerful four letter word. — John Wooden

Men ought to be a four-letter word! Menn! — Becky Lewellen Povich

In Charleston, temperance is a four letter word. — Mark R. Jones

New Rule: The person who sat in my seat on the flight before me and could not finish the People magazine crossword puzzle has to be ashamed of themselves. I don't know who you are, but "Desperate _wives"? Nothing? A three-letter word for "Writing utensil, you're holding it in your hand." Here's one more for you: Four letters, begins with a v, something you shouldn't be allowed to do this November. — Bill Maher

The length of the friendship never brought astonishment. After all, the
majority of Baby Boomers could likely claim a long-standing friendship in their lives. No, it was always the letters: the-pen-on-paper, inside a-stamped-envelope, mailed-in-a-mailbox letter that was awe inspiring.
"You've been writing a letter every week for almost thirty years?"
The question always evokes disbelief, particularly since the dawn of the
Internet and email. We quickly correct the misconception.
"Well, at least one letter, but usually more. We write each other three or four letters a week. And we never wait for a return letter before beginning another."
Conservatively speaking, at just three letters a week since 1987, that
would equal 4,368 letters each, but we'd both agree that estimate is much
too low. We have, on occasion, written each other two letters in a single
day. — Mary Potter Kenyon

If love was magic you wouldn't be amazed, you much rather look at reality in a daze. see love is merely a four letter phrase, It's here It's there it may never change. For love is a verb an action, a zing, It is never a person place or thing. — Aja Taylor

It is the sort of book that has to be rested on a table or a lectern; it is not easy to lift a volume one-handed, and only a basketball player would be able to hold it up and open with a single hand. With its pages spread, it is almost twenty inches wide, and the pages are a foot and half in length; stacked, the four volumes make a pile nearly ten inches high. Johnson's finished tome was stately in appearance - 'Vasta mole superbus' ('Proud in its great bulk'), as he beamingly described it in a letter to Thomas Warton.1 — Henry Hitchings

Petyr had been talking about mathematics again, boring everyone, when her mother looked up from her plate with a smile and announced that Julie had written a letter to say she'd quit the family. Clarissa's mouth had dropped open. It was like saying that the sun had decided to become a politician or that four had decided to be eight. It wasn't quite incomprehensible, but it lived on the edge. — James S.A. Corey

Having completed its conquest of California in 1844, the United States looked across the Pacific for new business opportunities. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo (then called Edo) Bay with four men-of-war, and handed over a letter for the Japanese emperor from the American president which began with the ominous words, 'You know that the United States of America now extend from sea to sea.' Denied an audience with the emperor, Perry retreated with subtle threats to return with more firepower if the Japanese did not agree to open their ports to American trade. They refused. He did as he said; and the Japanese succumbed. — Pankaj Mishra

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right ... . Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me. — Charles Bukowski

The thing with that word "establishment" is a four-letter word in the 2016 politics, so toxic, so pejorative that pretty much no one wants to be associated with it. — Chris Hayes

He's meeting his girl now, a girl not much older than 14. A five-and-ten-cents store Cleopatra, a four letter word. — Kurt Vonnegut

My favorite four-letter words are 'hard work'. — John Wayne

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose ... anything goes. — Cole Porter

Life is a four-letter word. — Lenny Bruce

Love is a four letter word if you speak it or write it down, but it becomes powerful once you feel it and live in it. — The Prolific Penman

I got the letter about becoming a Sir in 2000, the same year that Pauline asked me if we could finally get married. My assistant, Colette, called up and it turned out both the wedding and the Buck House ceremony were happening on the same day. I was knighted at 11 and married at four. She became an instant Lady. — Paul Smith

Real' is a four-letter word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof. — Seanan McGuire

Trap is a four-letter word, and like so many four-letter words it can mean something entirely else.
--Hugo Anstead — Jennifer A. Girardin