Idiomatic Quotes & Sayings

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

I have to admit that more and more lately, the whole idea of jazz as an idiom is one that I've completely rejected. I just don't see it as an idiomatic thing any more ... To me, if jazz is anything, it's a process, and maybe a verb, but it's not a thing. It's a form that demands that you bring to it things athat are valuable to you, that are personal to you. That, for me, is a pretty serious distinction that doesn't have anything to do with blues, or swing, or any of these other things that tend to be listed as essentials in order for music to be jazz with a capital J. — Pat Metheny

she constantly shifts back and forth between her "literate" narrator's voice and a highly idiomatic black voice — Zora Neale Hurston

Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye. — Jessica Helfand

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language. — Robert A. Heinlein

Technical advisor. Since you know our enemies so well, we're going to pick your brain. (Jericho)
I'll tell you what you want to know. There's no need to torture me for it. (Asmodeus)
Pick your brain is an idiomatic expression, Asmodeus. It means we'll have you tell us things. We're not actually going in there to mess with your head. (Delphine)
Oh, thank the Source. I can't stand it when someone opens my skull. It really hurts. (Asmodeus) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The truth about idiocy ... is that it is at once an ethical and cognitive failure ... The Greek idios means 'private,' and idiotes means a private person, as opposed to a person in their public role ... This still comes across in the related English words 'idiomatic' and 'idiosyncratic,' which similarly suggest self-enclosure ... At the bottom, the idiot is a solipsist. — Matthew B. Crawford

Jazz music, as is also the case with the old down-home spirituals, gospel and jubilee songs, jumps, shouts and moans, is essentially an American vernacular or idiomatic modification of musical conventions imported from Europe, beginning back during the time of the early settlers of the original colonies. — Albert Murray

I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner. — Jacques Derrida

'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded. — Edmund White

The Colonel grunted. "In my experience, those things don't have to try to scare the shit out of anyone. If she wanted you dead or broken, you would be. Vampires have - idiomatic speech patterns. You may have simply misunderstood her." "She called me a cold cut. — Peter Watts

Random House, in the catbird seat, since it gets to recite last, declares in 1966, "The use of like in place of as is universally condemned by teachers and editors, notwithstanding its wide currency, especially in advertising slogans. Do as I say, not as I do does not admit of like instead of as. In an occasional idiomatic phrase, it is somewhat less offensive when substituted for as if (He raced down the street like crazy), but this example is clearly colloquial and not likely to be found in any but the most informal written contexts." I find this excellent. It even tells who will hurt you if you make a mistake, and it withholds aid and comfort from those friends of cancer and money, those greedy enemies of the language who teach our children to say after school, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. — Kurt Vonnegut

But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation - and yours too - to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity.
Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secret's secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die. — Jacques Derrida

When the organization called soul is free, moving and operative, initial as well as terminal, it is spirit. Qualities are both static, substantial, and transitive. Spirit quickens; it is not only alive, but spirit gives life. Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit. He lives in his works and his works do follow him. Soul is form, spirit informs. It is the moving function of that of which soul is the substance. Perhaps the words soul and spirit are so heavily laden with traditional mythology and sophisticated doctrine that they must be surrendered; it may be impossible to recover for them in science and philosophy the realities designated in idiomatic speech. But the realities are there, by whatever names they be called. — John Dewey

The greatness of Mac Rebennack, alias, Dr. John, also known as John Crieux, rests on his command of the musical use of idiomatic expression. Not a technically well-endowed singer, nor a great songwriter, he leaves his mark through the discipline and control he exerts over all that he touches. — Jon Landau

I'm interested in complexity, in the mathematical sense, as well as the idiomatic sense. The idea of emergence - that it's possible for complex patterns to arise out of many simple interactions - is fascinating. — Hari Kunzru

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers. — Walter Lippmann

No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden - viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but there being no difference of rank or position between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and rank. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

You think about every piece of idiomatic speech adopted by white men over the past ten or twenty years; virtually all of it comes from hip-hop. — Jess Row

Why don't you purchase an Italian dictionary? I will assume the expense."
"I have one," she said, "but I don't think it's very good. Half the words are missing."
"Half?"
"Well, some," she amended. "But truly, that's not the problem."
He blinked, waiting for her to continue.
She did. Of course. "I don't think Italian is the author's native tongue," she said.
"The author of the dictionary?" he queried.
"Yes. It's not terribly idiomatic. — Julia Quinn

Idiomatic expressions like "hungry as a horse" persisted for decades after the last horse had perished. — Kat Ross

All translation is a compromise - the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic. — Benjamin Jowett