Nonce Quotes & Sayings

I HAVE A SECRET I CAN'T TELL NOR INK;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK.
THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR;
WHEN IT'S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE.
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR.
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU'RE INCORRECT,
AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT.
THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS,
FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE. — Pseudonymous Bosch

Ray's got a thing for everyone with a vagina. He's a dickhead. — Sarah Lotz

No, this was Philly. Drunks here boo Santa and get in more trouble than a dog with an Easter basket, and like the dog, they usually end up either sick or dead. Ah yes, another lovely eve in the big city. — Kym Grosso

The difference between an expert and a novice fighter is that the expert makes use of each opportunity — Bruce Lee

He leaned in close. He saw his father's dirty hands. He spoke the last familiar words in a whisper.
Its' fixed. — Mitch Albom

Because of social strictures against even the mildest swearing, America developed a particularly rich crop of euphemistic expletives - darn, durn, goldurn, goshdad, goshdang, goshawful, blast, consarn, confound, by Jove, by jingo, great guns, by the great horn spoon (a nonce term first cited in the Biglow Papers), jo-fired, jumping Jehoshaphat, and others almost without number - but even this cautious epithets could land people in trouble as late as the 1940s. — Bill Bryson

I do make some conscious efforts to write female friendships, intergenerational female friendships. I make a conscious effort to include things that I see as important real parts of my life that are not reflected as much as I think they should be in popular culture. We very seldom have the opportunity to see women compete and remain friends. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

You don't know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don't know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty! — Gustav Landauer

All paths lead to God, but only one path will present you before God without fault and with great joy. Pick a path, any path - it will take you to God. Trust me: you will stand before Him one day. You will meet your Maker. You will see the face of Christ. There are many ways up the mountain, but only one will result in life instead of destruction. — Kevin DeYoung

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change - that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. — Robert Louis Stevenson

It's not possible to be perfect - you can always do something better. I'm never proud of what I've done. Sometimes, I'm not ashamed. — Natalia Makarova

We part, then, for the nonce, do we?'
'I fear so, sir.'
'You take the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I shall miss you, Jeeves.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Who was that chap who was always beefing about gazelles?'
'The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well, it was sure to die.'
'It's the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don't mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?'
'Not at all, sir. — P.G. Wodehouse

I've stolen books. They're the only thing worth taking that don't belong to you. — Sully Tarnish

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street. — Jonathan Safran Foer

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things. — Bryant McGill

Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical. — Vladimir Nabokov

Abby stared at me, her fingers going all grabby like she wanted to snatch the phone and save me. No girl had ever wanted to save me before. I glanced away, because her worried expression made me want to laugh, but when I wasn't looking at her, the thought of it made me want to kiss her. — Ophelia London

Your courage draws people out of complacency into their destiny. — Bill Johnson

They should."
"Should be like a wood bee," she said.
It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the simplest hope, a nonce catchphrase like so many others lifted from favorite movies or TV shows that served as a rote substitute for conversation and bound them like shut-in twins, each other's best and, most often, only audience. — Stewart O'Nan