Quotes & Sayings About Prepositions

We will never have peace without friendship around the world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put. — Winston S. Churchill

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They're too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer's less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they're guardians of language. They're no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind. — Stephen Fry

Prayer or not, I want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is possible for anyone to find that one special person. That person to spend Christmas with or grow old with or just to take a nice silly walk in Central Park with. Somebody who wouldn't judge another for the prepositions they dangle, or their run-on sentences, and who in turn wouldn't be judged for the snobbery of their language etymology inclinations. — Rachel Cohn

For example, there is an old grammarian's saw about how a sentence can end in five prepositions. Daddy trudges upstairs to Junior's bedroom to read him a bedtime story. Junior spots the book, scowls, and asks, Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for? — Steven Pinker

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection. — Jean Paul

A preposition is a word You mustn't end a sentence with! — Berton Braley

Ah! I--to you, Petrovitch, this--" It must be known that Akakiy Akakievitch expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever. — Nikolai Gogol

Some people have asked me where I find the large quantity of prepositions that I need to keep my Bookworms fit and well. The answer is, of course, that I use omitted prepositions, of which, when mixed with dropped definite articles, make a nourishing food. There are a superabundance of these in the English language — Jasper Fforde

TEXAN: "Where are you from?" HARVARD STUDENT: "I am from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions." TEXAN: "OK, where are you from, jackass?" - Variation on an old joke — Ammon Shea

Student loan debt is crushing young people. And so they're not doing the things we would expect them to do. They're not moving out of their parents' homes in as big a numbers, they're not saving up money for down payments, they're not buying homes or cars or starting small businesses or doing any of the things that help move this economy forward. — Elizabeth Warren

Grace, if you have used an iron within the last six months, I will eat that fork," Ms. Chancellor says.
"Which one?" I try to tease. "You've got a lot of forks to choose from."
"From which to choose, Grace. Do not end your sentences in prepositions, dear."
"Of course, I totally see what you're getting at. I mean, at what you're getting. — Ally Carter

It was good of you to look for Quentin." "Good!" she exclaimed. "Good! O Anthony!" "Well, so it was," he answered. "Or good in you. How accurate one has to be with one's prepositions! Perhaps it was a preposition wrong that set the whole world awry." CHARLES WILLIAMS The Place of the Lion — John Piper

Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all. — Danny Meyer

I start sentences with ands and buts. I end sentences with prepositions. — Carol S. Dweck

There must be a stronger foundation than mere friendship or sexual attraction. Unconditional love, agape love, will not be swayed by time or circumstances. — Stephen Kendrick

English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly and will not obey - just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions. — Catherynne M Valente

do not receive the actions, but stand after prepositions. Thus, — Sam An Teng

Suddenly a great sense of despondency comes over me. To-morrow we shall take the prepositions, I think to myself - and next week we shall have a dictation. In a year's time you will have by heart fifty questions from the Catechism; in four years you will start the larger multiplication tables. - And so you will grow up, and Time will take you in his pincers - one dumbly, another savagely, or gently or shatteringly. Each will have his own destiny and thus or thus it will overtake you. What help shall I be to you then with my conjugations and enumerations of all the rivers of Germany? Forty of you - forty different lives standing behind you and waiting. How gladly would I help you, if I could. But who can really help another here? Have I even been able to help Adolf Bethke? The bell rings. The first lesson is over. — Erich Maria Remarque

They had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands; the air was heav'y with th'em&. — Jasper Fforde

The Patriarch Joseph, after agreeing with the Latins that their formula of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Son meant the same as the Greek formula of the Holy Ghost proceeding through the Son, fell ill and died. An unkind scholar remarked that after muddling his prepositions what else could he decently do? — Steven Runciman

A preposition is a word that shows a relationship between its object and another word in the sentence. Examples: By grace are ye saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8a) These two prepositions introduce phrases that tell us how individuals are saved: By grace and through faith. Both prepositional phrases are used as adverbs because they modify the verb are saved. — Shirley M. Forsen

If is a very big preposition. — John Major

The ladies egged him on; in Eve's name, they dared him; so he made love with discreet verbs and light nouns, delicate conjunctions. They begged; they defied him to define ... define everything. They could not be scandalized - impossible, they said. Indecent prepositions such as in, on, up, merely made them smile, and the roundest exclamation broke upon them like a bubble's kiss, a butterfly's. Smooth and creamy adjectives enabled them to lick their lips upon the crudest story. How charmingly you speak, Reverend Furber, how much you've seen of this wicked world, and how alive you are to it, they said. — William H Gass

The English language has been thrust upon Americans. And it is wrong. As static and immobile as are the English, just so ever-moving are Americans. Here is a huge country. Not a mere island. Naturally people move. And they need a moving language. A language that can interpret American life. Nouns and adjectives won't express American life. They are too weak, too immobile. But verbs, adverbs, prepositions and the like, ah, they are moving, just as Americans. Obviously we cannot suddenly junk the English language and adopt some other tongue. English is too connotative, too close to us. Our problem is to adapt the English language to American needs. To make it move with us Americans. That is the problem
to write things as they are, not as they seem. our aim must be not to explain things, but to write the thing itself, and thereby in itself be self explanatory. — Gertrude Stein

The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate. — Mary McCarthy

On verge of going apostrophic, taking foxglove, myrrh, mare's milk cure, shedding articles, shredding conjunctions, but can't shake prepositions. — Kate Campbell

Tables of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Bonjour, France! Chapter 2 Numbers and Gender Chapter 3 Plural Forms of Nouns Chapter 4 Pronouns Chapter 5 Verbs Chapter 6 Prepositions Chapter 7 Useful Expressions Preview Of'Spanish For Beginners' Check Out My Other Books Conclusion — Manuel De Cortes

Mmmm I like the sounds you're making," he murmured in a honeyed whisper. "I just bet that you're a screamer. Should I have brought earplugs?
Kurt Nielsen — Nikki Sex

About, not to. Prepositions had been invented for a reason. — Lauren Willig

Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power. — Mikhail Bakunin

Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements. — Isaac Marion