Mot Quotes & Sayings

I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce.
Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.
Two sentences," said Joyce.
I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said.
No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. — James Joyce

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position. — Nancy Kress

Early in "Postulates of Linguistics," Deleuze and Guattari claim that, "the elementary unit of language ... is the order-word," which "not to be believe but to be obeyed" (ATP, 76). Perhaps the starkest example is the judge's sentence that condemns a criminal to death (80-81; 94). But the French for order-word, mot d'ordre, also refers to the political slogan, which is substantiated by Deleuze and Guattari's reference to Lenin's pamphlet "On Slogans" (83). Both of these examples indicate how closely their linguistics aligns with the rhetorical theory of symbolic action. Rhetoric is excellent at studying those acts that cause incorporeal transformations, which as changes in a state of affairs that do not directly alter its materiality (80-88). — Anonymous

You say that someday your prince will come. More than anything, you want him to reply, "But what if your prince is right under your nose?" Instead he says, "Well, as long as he's mot one of those deposed princes ... "
You wish he weren't such a prince. You wish he were a frog. — David Levithan

(see figure 1) or the macro-steps of the day's plans (see figure 4). The level of detail depends on the context and the child's needs for communication support. To help encourage literacy and develop sight words at — Teresa Garland Mot Otr

Dorothy Parker once said: I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid." Upon delivering this Dot bon mot, with much waving of sparkly rings and jingly bracelets, Constance Langtry comments that she'd add a fourth: "Deft tongue. And I don't mean a good talker. — Marie Wilson

They were eyes made for laughter, but not raucous yuks; rather, for the laughter of wit, of erudition, of the bon mot. — Stephen Hunter

The French call mot juste the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out. — Jacques Barzun

I had learned of Gertrude Stein's bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist. — Harold E. Varmus

God not da faddah, he just the spoiled moody child, but you got to go t'rough him to get to da real power, his mama, Mot'er God. She da real Almighty! She run da heavens alone. Original single parent. When somethin' bad happen, usually mean she let God try his hand, and he screw up plenny. You need something important, you go directly Mot'er God. Jesus, Mary, Joseph? Dey just small potatoes, part of the chorus, neh? — Kiana Davenport

Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot — Albert Einstein

The state might say that it had taken a year to write the book, and the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that every bon mot of his had cost a purse of gold. What — Upton Sinclair

Small! I'm mot going to be small anymore. I'm going to be a dragon, with wings like lacquer fans and jets of fire breath for roasting up goose suppers midair! Pippin spread out her arms, imagining them wings. Why not? she asked herself. — Laini Taylor

It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. — Aristotle.

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot. — Honore De Balzac

Le mot 'psychologie'est un de ceux qu'aucun auteur d'aujourd'hui ne peut entendre prononcer a' son sujet sans baisser les yeux et rougir. The word 'psychology' is one that no author today can hear said about her work without lowering her eyes and blushing. — Nathalie Sarraute

You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a bon mot, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out. — Jane Austen

The difference between sex with David and sex with Stephen is like the difference between science and art. With Stephen it's all empathy and imagination and exploration and the shock of the new, and the outcome is ... uncertain, if you know what I mean. I'm engaged by it, but I', mot necessarily sure what its all about. David, on the other hand, presses this button, then that one, and bingo! It's like operating a lift - just as romantic, but actually just as useful. — Nick Hornby

A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arse-holes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this ... but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.
We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat ... Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege. — Tim Minchin

One look, all is said. One word, all is lived. (Un regard, tout est dit. - Une parole, tout se vit.) — Charles De Leusse

Every single world we've visited isn't just random - it's the result of countless choices, all of them combining to create a new reality. You and I have been given an infinity of chances, and that's so much more than mot people will ever get - but in the end we get to live in only one world, and that's the world we make. I want us to create that world together. — Claudia Gray

Death is the word that kills all the words. (La mort est un mot - Qui tue tous les mots) — Charles De Leusse

A heavy gas generated by the fermentation of equally dense ideas, stupidity is the most common renewable source of energy, the easiest to extract, and the least costly, except when coupled with nuclear energy. — Stephane Mot

As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene ... No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.
(Quote taken from "What Life Means to Einstein," The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.) — Albert Einstein

For a moment, Isabel's eyes met those of someone looking out of the window, a thin-faced woman with her hair done up in a bun. The woman began a smile, but stopped, as if conscious of somehow transgressing the conventions of isolation with which as city-dwellers we immure ourselves. The bus moved on, and zisabel felt a sudden desire to run alongside it, to wave to the woman, to aknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between them. But she did mot, necause she never acted on these impulses, and because it might have puzzled or even frightened the other woman. — Alexander McCall Smith

Sand by the seashore is inestimable. — Lailah Gifty Akita

She would but be repaid by my taking her to wife, and that I could not grant her, for love cometh of the heart and mot by constraint. — Rupert S. Holland

I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The mot juste unarriving? Tell that to your desk. — Geraldine Brooks

Logic is the youth of mathematics, mathematics is the manhood of logic. This brilliant mot of the eminent philosopher of mathematics is no — Alfred Korzybski

I wasn't thinking of Tom but of myself. And of a self who seemed to be mot 'me' but 'she.' An innocent, moving fecklessly through the days, knowing nothing, whom I saw now with awful wisdom ... I had hesitated to make this journey, had put it off year after year but had known always that eventually it must be undertaken. And, confronted at last with the mirage
with the shining phantom of that other time
I was surprised to find that it was myself that was the poignant presence. — Penelope Lively

You just put your boot so far up his ass, he'll have to eat his dinner with a shoehorn." "I can always count on you for a suitable bon mot. — Douglas Preston

Like everyone else, I grew up loving the Anne books, but L.M. Montgomery is so much more. Like Jane Austen, she has an eye for the absurd and a gift for the 'mot juste.' — Lauren Willig

Of alle the floures in the mede, Than love I most these floures whyte and rede, Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun ... Til that myn herte dye ... That wel by reson men hit calle may The 'dayesye' or elles the 'ye of day,' The emperice and flour of floures alle. I pray to god that faire mot she falle, And alle that loven floures, for hir sake! — Geoffrey Chaucer

Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection. And engineers, like poets, are seldom completely satisfied with their creations. They notice, even if no one else does, the world that is not quite le mot juste, or the hairline crack that blemishes the structure. — Henry Petroski

Allah said in the Holy Qur'an there are many kinds of hearts,

Heart healthy: it is faithful to God and free of distractions

Penitent heart: a lasting return to God and repent to him

Heart diffidence: who's afraid of Allah

Heart met: to maximize their God

Living heart: who believes in God and thank him and not be ungrateful him

The patient's heart: is free of suspicion or hypocrisy

Blind: a heart that does not see right

The heart of sin: it stifles the right certificate

Arrogant heart: which flaunts on people and argue and fight

Large heart: and he who tended him compassion and mercy

Harsh: a heart that knows no God and no MOT

Heart dopey: it overlooked his role and his worship life

O Lord, let our hearts of hearts sound the repentant — Qur'an

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

I'm sorry, I sobbed. I'm helpless.
That's where you're wrong, she told me. You're mot helpless. You need help. There's a big difference. — Jodi Picoult