Idiomatic Words 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 fun when I want to have fun, but I am learning how to balance my life out. — Carmen Electra

I'm not a meek lady who stays at home and cooks. — Diane Hendricks

Just as he still cared more for her than for any other creature, so did he more intensely and frequently hate her. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived. (The Inconvenient Messiah, BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 1982) — Jeffrey R. Holland

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

Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year. — Ogden Nash

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

The right of education of the female sex, as it is in a manner everywhere neglected, so it ought to be generally lamented. Most in this depraved later age think a woman learned and wise enough if she can distinguish her husband's bed from another's. — Hannah Woolley

Vulgar and obscene, the papers run rumors daily about people in show business, tales of wicked ways and witless affairs. — Carroll O'Connor

We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption. — John Adams

It is wrong to think that misfortunes come from the east or from the west; they originate within one's own mind. — Gautama Buddha

And then her envious heart was glad, and as happy as such a heart could be. — Jacob Grimm

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 Jews have] an attitude of hostility and hatred towards all others. — Tacitus

Happiness is contagious. Be a carrier!! — Robert Orben

I think that if you don't like something and it's not easy, you shouldn't be doing it. — Dave Hickey