Locution Quotes & Sayings

Be happy to, I said, cringing to hear such a dumb, folksy locution escape my lips, then launched into my well-rehearsed precis. The fact that humankind now finds itself in a post-Darwinian epistemological condition, I explained, need not trouble us from an ethical perspective. — James K. Morrow

When Torgon Greyiron returned at last to the Iron Islands, he declared the — George R R Martin

snow, I think. We have a few inches already." Julie knew that 'a little snow' to her aunt might well be enough to put the entire northeast into a state of emergency. Aunt Gwen was pushing hard for Julie — Amy Gamet

Growth provides novel experiences for youth; decay the same, alas, for age. — Mason Cooley

I guess that's the way secrets are. They're only heavy when you're holding them. As soon as you let go, the significance of keeping those secrets hidden blows away and everything falls into place. — Cassia Leo

[Jesus Christ] used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody's, to make him normal. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Narcissists (and often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate: they fend off, hide and evade . . . [They] perfect the ability of saying nothing in lengthy Castro-like speeches. Their locution is impregnated with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my", "mine" - aka "high pronoun density").

The ensuing convoluted sentences are .. a lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The narcissist prefers to wait and see what procrastination brings: postponement of the inevitable leads to the inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival. — Sam Vaknin

The higher the testosterone, the lower the maturity level. — Jennifer DeCuir

Soon I reveled in the very premises I had set aside and rationalized away: the preexistent Logos, the triune mystery, the radical depth of sin passing through the generations, the risen Lord and the grace of baptism. — Thomas C. Oden

You need a husband and some babies to look after. Otherwise you're going to grow up into a virago ... — Lindsay Armstrong

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. — Joseph Brodsky

It happens that I despise that locution, "having sex," which describes something a good deal more mechanical than making love and a good deal less fun than fucking. — Wallace Stegner

He growled. "You know quite well that that locution is vile. — Rex Stout

Considerable thought was given in early Congresses to the possibility of renaming the country. From the start, many people recognized that United States of America was unsatisfactory. For one thing, it allowed of no convenient adjectival form. A citizen would have to be either a United Statesian or some other such clumsy locution, or an American, thereby arrogating to ourselves a title that belonged equally to the inhabitants of some three dozen other nations on two continents. Several alternatives to America were actively considered -Columbia, Appalachia, Alleghania, Freedonia or Fredonia (whose denizens would be called Freeds or Fredes)- but none mustered sufficient support to displace the existing name. — Bill Bryson